Friends, family attend vigil for wounded officer

INDIANAPOLIS – A prayer vigil for an Indianapolis policeman shot while trying to capture a homicide suspect drew friends, family members and other community members outside the hospital where the officer remains in a coma.

Fishburn, 29, a five-year Indianapolis police veteran, was wounded Thursday in an exchange of gunfire with a man wanted in connection with one of the 11 killings that has occurred in the city over the past two weeks.

“When he we heard that Jason Fishburn, one of the public servants that’s serving us, that’s watching out for us, had gone down, it was time for us to come up,” said one of the vigil’s organizers, Pastor A. Thomas Hill of the Healing Streams Word & Worship Center.

The man accused of shooting Fishburn, Brian Reese, 36, of Indianapolis, was being treated in Wishard’s detention unit for a shoulder wound.

Fishburn was among the officers searching for Reese when he was spotted in a van driven by Reese’s 66-year-old mother on the city’s east side, police said.

Fishburn underwent surgery Thursday night at Wishard Memorial Hospital as doctors tried to relieve pressure on his brain from what Police Chief Michael Spears has called a “devastating wound to his head.”

He remained in critical condition Saturday.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people including fellow officers turned out for a blood drive in Fishburns’ name.

“I was just compelled to do something to help the family out,” Capt. Dave Wilks said.