Officer who was shot in the line of duty finds new calling as police chaplain

DETROIT - 13 years ago, Detroit Police Officer Derrick Hayes wasn’t supposed to be working, but he and his wife decided they could use the money, so he went in. It was a decision that would change his life.

Hayes and his partner responded to an armed robbery. When Hayes attempted to subdue one of the suspects, he was shot--6 times.

“Thought I was paralyzed,” he told Fox 2 Detroit. “Couldn’t move my legs. But I laid there, and I looked up in the sky.”

In that moment, Hayes realized he had a different calling. If he made it, he would trade in the badge for a bible. Hayes says his survival that night was a message from God. 

“I was left here for a reason,” he said. “It wasn’t just to continually exist.”

In May, Hayes will graduate as a police chaplain. He hopes to use his new position to counsel those who go through what he went through. To show officers they can make it through a dark time. Most of all though, he says he wants to show both the police and the public that there is good in the world, even in tough times.