Deputy injured in shooting continues to improve

Utah County Sheriff's Deputy Greg Sherwood always told his wife not to worry about the phone call from a fellow law enforcement officer. If it's a phone call, it meant he was okay.

Worry about the knock on the door, he would say to Gina Sherwood. That's how she would know it was bad.

So the wife was shocked when there was a knock on her door on Jan. 30. A deputy was there, and he indeed had bad news: Her husband had been shot in the head while on duty.

"It was all very surreal," Gina Sherwood said Monday during a news conference. "It's horrible to see someone you love so much and see how hurt they are. But at the same time, [I was] so grateful that he didn't die and it wasn't worse."

At first, Greg Sherwood was in critical condition at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. Since the shooting, he has undergone two surgeries — one removed a bullet fragment that had lodged between his brain and his skull — and by Monday, he was in "fair" condition.

His wife said he was scheduled to moved to the rehabilitation center at the hospital on Monday, where he would continue treatment for 10 more days before being released to go home.

Gina Sherwood said that her husband is up and walking around the hospital, and is joking and in good spirits. "It's always one of those things you know can happen, but you don't expect it to," Gina Sherwood said of the shooting. "...He's my hero and I'm so proud of him."

Greg Sherwood was shot in Santaquin on Jan. 30 after accused shooter Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui, 27, had fatally shot Utah County Sgt. Cory Wride on State Road 73 between Eagle Mountain and Cedar Fort.

Authorities have said Wride exited his patrol car to check on a pulled-over pickup truck with flashers blinking, and spoke with Garcia-Jauregui. Wride returned to his car and began searching police databases for information about Garcia-Jauregui and the pickup he was driving. At some point, someone slid open the truck's rear window and fired a gun at Wride, killing him in his car.

Garcia-Jauregui, and a 17-year-old girl who was in the truck with him, fled south, where Sherwood encountered them as they reached Santaquin. Authorities have released little about Sherwood's interactions with Garcia-Jauregui's vehicle beyond saying someone fired a handgun out the rear window and a bullet struck Greg Sherwood in the head.

"He does remember everything," Gina Sherwood said. "He remembers finding [Garcia-Jauregui's] car, and going after it. He just said he knew it was the car ... All of a sudden, he heard glass breaking and it felt like he had been hit in the head with a sledgehammer."

Juab County Sheriff's deputies eventually wounded and caught Garcia-Jauregui in their county after he allegedly carjacked a woman and fired at deputies and passing vehicles on the freeway.

Garcia-Jauregui died at a local hospital the next day.

The 17-year-old girl is currently being held in a juvenile detention center in Provo as authorities investigate what role, if any, she had in the shooting.

jmiller@sltrib.com

Twitter: @jm_miller