In March 2015, a meme was circulated about deputy Scott Wood of the Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office, who was attacked by three assailants when he stopped by a convenience store on his way home from a shift:
PLEASE SHARE! This is deputy Scott Wood of the Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office (Kansas City, Kansas). Deputy Wood had finished his shift and stopped at a 7-Eleven before going home. While at the counter, Deputy Wood was attacked from behind by three armed black men. They shot Deputy Wood seven times and robbed him and the store. There is no national media coverage of this brutal attack on an unsuspecting person. There is no news show crying outrage over this or even mentioning it. I think people should know how dangerous it is for Police and how unfair they are treated by the news to boost ratings and sell ads. Deputy Wood is still alive and fighting for his life in stable but critical condition. He is a better man than the three that attacked him. Wishing him a speedy recovery. A fundraising page has been created by the WyCo Sheriff's office to help the Wood family...
In the very early morning hours of 4 March 2015, off-duty Wyandotte County, Kansas Deputy Scott Wood was shot at a 7-11 convenience store during an attempted robbery. On 5 March 2015, television station WDAF-TV in Kansas City reported that Deputy Wood called in the crime (then in-progress) and subsequently reported he sustained gunshot wounds before he was shot again in the face:
Deputy Wood's shift had just concluded at about 1 a.m. when he stopped by the 7-Eleven off of Shawnee Drive and I-635 when three men entered the store. Investigators say the men were believed to be involved in two other convenience store robberies and were planning to rob the 7-Eleven when they hit a clerk with a gun and shot the deputy.
Deputy Wood fell to the ground, but was able to use a portable radio to call in "officer down" before he was shot once more in the face. Sheriff Ash said the suspects then robbed the store, robbed the deputy and fled the scene, sparking a manhunt.
On 9 March 2015, the same station reported that three men in custody were under investigation in relation to the ambush in which Deputy Wood was seriously injured:
All three men, who before the robbery were already convicted felons, have been charged with some very serious crimes stemming from the incident, which police say took place the same night Wyandotte County Sheriff's Deputy Scott Wood was shot multiple times, critically injuring him.
Charles Bowser was first to face the judge in the courtroom. Next was Dyron King and then King's cousin, Cecil Meggerson. Each man was charged with two counts of aggravated robbery, conspiracy and criminal possession of a firearm.
Deputy Scott Wood's shooting and recovery were reported extensively in the news media, although the coverage was primarily local in nature. According to the FBI's Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) tally, about 50,000 police officers are assaulted in the line of duty each year, with about 250 of them suffering injuries from assaults with firearms. Obviously all of these incidents involving the shooting of police, as unfortunate and tragic as they may be, don't make the national news.
In Deputy Wood's case, there were no additional reported factors present that served to propel his case into the national sphere: the shooting was not fatal, the assault on him was not premeditated (he was coincidentally present when armed robbers entered a convenience store), and there was no indication that he was targeted due to his race.
Thankfully, Deputy Wood was not killed in the assault and recovered from the brutal crime relatively speedily. By 13 March 2015 Wood (who suffered seven gunshot injuries) had made remarkable strides and was breathing and walking on his own, a factor which (sadly, some might reflect) made his shooting a somewhat less noteworthy story outside of Wyandotte County by news media standards.
Another factor that may have played into less extensive news coverage is that Wood's assailants had not been officially identified at the time the above-reproduced meme began to circulate, and no arrests had been made in the shooting. It wasn't even clear if police had determined that the men described as persons of interest in early news reports were in fact connected with the crime.
By April 2018, however, three men had been arrested, convicted, and sentenced for their part in the attempted killing of Deputy Wood:
Charles Bowser was sentenced to life plus 447 months in prison on [20 April 2018], according to the Wyandotte County District Attorney's Office.
Bowser, 21, was found guilty by a Wyandotte County jury [in May 2017] for attempting to kill Scott Wood in March 2015. The deputy was inside a Kansas City, Kan., convenience store when three armed robbers burst in.
The two others involved, Cecil Meggerson, 36, and Dyron King, 25, were also convicted. They were sentenced to life in prison in 2016 and each received an additional 37 years for other convictions in the case.
Wood testified at an earlier trial that he was in uniform when he stopped on his way home from work at a 7-Eleven on Shawnee Drive near Interstate 635.
The deputy was talking to the store clerk and had his back to the door when three armed men burst in and forced him to the ground at gunpoint.
Both Wood and the clerk were pistol-whipped. One of the gunmen took Wood’s handgun before they began firing shots at him. One bullet shattered his jaw. Another hit him in the shoulder, and five more struck him in the chest and abdomen.
"When I look into the mirror at my scars and wounds, I am reminded of what these men tried to take away from me," Wood said in his statement. "Not only did they try to take my life away from me, they also tried to take away from me the chance to spend one more day with my wife and son."