On Friday afternoon, San Diego police Sgt. Anthony Elliott walked into a police building alongside his wife, Laura, who is expecting their third child, a girl.
That act alone was a miracle.
On Dec. 7, 2023, Elliott, a member of the department’s SWAT team, was shot in the head in 4S Ranch while responding to a report of a stolen vehicle.
It was possible that he would not survive, let alone walk again.
But after an extensive multi-month recovery, Elliott walked out of the Colorado rehabilitation center where he had been treated and in the fall returned to work with the police department in an administrative role.
“When I first got injured, I always said I just wanted to play with my kids again,” Elliott said. “I want to hold my wife. And all that stuff’s come true.
“My wish came true,” he said Friday in an interview with media, during which he and his wife reflected on the incident and the ensuing months.
“As the wife, I was preparing for the worst,” said Laura Elliott. “He was paralyzed at first, and I didn’t know how that was going to go and how our lives were going to shift and change completely.”
Elliott spent several early months in Colorado, where he underwent physical therapy to relearn how to walk and regain his motor skills.
At the time of the shooting, the family had been considering having another child, she explained. The incident threw that possibility into uncertainty along with the rest of the family’s future.
“One of his favorite things was to go down to one of the tide pools at the beach and have the kids explore,” she said.
But to reach the tide pools involved navigating stairs and rocky beaches.
“I remember being in the hospital, seeing a photo of the tide pools, and breaking down crying because I didn’t think he was ever going to be able to do that again,” she said.
But Anthony, spurred by his wife, was determined to recover.
At the start of the process, Elliott said, he peppered his doctors with questions regarding whether he would be able to walk.
But Laura told her husband that whether he did so would be up him.
He decided he would.
“God gave me the ability to wiggle my toe and my finger, and I knew if I could do that, it’s just a matter of building up muscle,” he said.
Eventually, Elliott progressed to walking, albeit with lingering numbness in his leg and shards of the bullet still in his brain, and he walked out of the hospital on his own accord.
In the fall, he returned to the San Diego police force, but not in a field role, for now.
“My wife wants her husband alive,” he said.
“The night I left, I was playing with the kids in the street,” he said of his last field shift one year ago. “I said, ‘All right, honey, bye.’ I give her kiss, and it’s like a normal night.
“I just never came back,” he said.
Elliott said he recognizes the trauma the incident had on his family.
“That’s something really hard to get over — if you can get over it all,” he said.
Still, the family has worked at regaining a sense of normalcy, with Elliott noting that the daily routines of parenthood — changing diapers, playing on the floor — have been some of the best recovery methods.
“That’s what brought me back the fastest,” he said.