Fargo police officers to be honored for heroic actions during deadly ambush
FARGO, N.D. — A community will honor several North Dakota police officers as heroes Wednesday morning.
Fargo officer Jake Wallin died during an ambush back in July. Officers Andrew Dotas and Tyler Hawes were badly hurt.
Hawes, who needed more than a dozen surgeries to recover, talked about the ambush in a video released by Fargo police Tuesday.
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"Nothing I did that day is heroic — everything I did that day was my job," Hawes said. "It was my job to make sure Andrew was OK. It was my job to be there at that instance, that time."
Investigators believe the officers stopped a much larger attack. Video shows the gunman casing the scene of a fender bender, waiting and watching for roughly four minutes as more officers arrived before opening fire.
Police say that the suspect, 37-year-old Fargo resident Mohamad Barakat, died of his injuries at a local health care facility. He was fatally shot by Fargo police officer Zachary Robinson, who has been with the department for seven years.
Wallin, 23, is from St. Michael, Minnesota, served in the Minnesota Army National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq from November 2020 to July 2021, according to a spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard.
There's an awards ceremony in the morning at city hall.