The Long Road

Kaustuv Basu: CANAVERAL GROVES — The last time he came out here, Officer Vann Streety ran from a gunman who shot him six times.

The last time, on this dirt road called Satellite Boulevard west of Cocoa, he ducked into a thicket among the Brazilian pepper trees and the wax myrtle shrubs, hoping to lose his assailant.

The last time, he lay bleeding in the back of a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission pickup truck, a tourniquet on his left arm, before being flown to the hospital in a helicopter.