By Mariam Guirgis

Back in August of 2023, Officer Lucas Blom was dismissed from routine police briefing in Orlando, Florida, when he heard the sound of gunfire.

 “We all looked at each other like, ‘I think that was gunfire,’” Blom said. Then, a second round of shots occurred and, “that’s when we knew for sure.”

Blom, 30, and formerly of Mount Sinai, was only a few months out of the Police Academy but he instinctively knew what to do. “My adrenaline kicked in,” he said. “It was everything that the academy trained us for, so maybe it was a good thing that I was just a couple months out of the academy.”

What started as a traffic stop investigating a car believed to be connected to a homicide escalated quickly, resulting in two officers being shot. The suspect who had an extensive criminal history, Daton Viel, was found by a SWAT team the next morning at a Holiday Inn, where he was killed in a shootout.

When the gunfire started, Blom and the other officers from the briefing rushed toward the source of the shots. As Blom took a corner and looked to the side, he saw another officer coming towards him but he knew that something was wrong. After asking if the officer was OK, the injured officer said, “No, I’m hit.”

Moments after that, the injured officer collapsed to the ground. Blom pulled him to safety between two patrol cars, removed the officer’s bulletproof vest, and realized how bad the situation was. “He was in very critical condition,” Blom said. “He lost a lot of blood.” 

Blom and another officer drove the injured officer to the hospital and with the wounded officer in the back seat of a patrol car, Blom held onto the wounds to help seal the bleeding and kept talking to him, trying to keep him awake. 

“I was just doing my job,” Blom said. “A lot of the guys could have done what I did. It just happened that I was the one there.” The officer made it to surgery, where doctors were able to save his life.

For Blom’s parents, Arthur and Laurie Blom, the night was one of terror. Laurie Blom recalled how her son’s career path shifted from his initial desire to become a doctor to firefighter to policing. Blom was a volunteer at Mount Sinai Fire Department and then went on to become an emergency medical technician for New York Fire Department and was hoping to become a firefighter for the department before becoming an officer. 

“He was waiting to be a fireman with FDNY, but he was kind of aging out, and then COVID hit,” Laurie Blom said. “A friend in Orlando suggested he come down and apply to be a police officer, and that was it. He applied, they hired him and he went into the Police Academy.”

As Blom’s shift started that night, his parents had no idea what was unfolding until they received a text from him at around 2 or 3 in the morning. 

“My biggest fear is having my parents see that something happened to me on the news,” Blom said. “So I just needed to make sure that they knew I was OK.”

Laurie Blom remembered receiving the news as well before seeing it on the news the next day. “I was terrified,” she said. “It’s like the worst fear that I have is that I’m going to get a call that it was my son who was shot.”

Officer Blom received recognition and was honored in Florida on Sept. 11, for his bravery. Despite his son’s heroic actions, Arthur Blom said Officer Blom remains humble.

“At the last award, he said he wishes the rest of the group that was there was also honored,” Arthur Blom said. 

Indeed, when Officer Blom was asked about the recognition he said, “I love the recognition but hearing [the officer] tell me that it was because of me that he is alive just made it really hit.” 

The officer whose life Blom saved later met his parents and shared a heartfelt message. 

“He walked right up to me and said, ‘Thank you so much,’” Laurie Blom recalled. “I said, ‘I didn’t do anything.’ And he said, ‘If Luke hadn’t been born and decided to move to Florida, without him, I would not be alive today. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t get to see my baby grow up.’ ”

Laurie Blom also recalled hearing the injured officer tell her son, “It was your face that kept me calm and kept me alive … it was because of you that I knew I was going be OK.”

Mariam Guirgis is a reporter with The SBU Media Group, part of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism’s Working Newsroom program for students and local media.