NJ State PBA Main Convention
Paradise Island, Bahamas
Josh’s Story
Josh Vadell gives a thumbs up as he prepares to address the PBA convention.
Atlantic City’s Vadell tells PBA sisters and brothers how he recovered
from that night he was shot in the head
n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
“Please don’t let me die.”
He remembers so many details from that horrific night, espe-
cially shouting his plea to the doctors and nurses at AtlantiCare
trauma center. “I’m going to die,” he thought. Nobody survives
being shot in the head. “Please, don’t let me die.”
Approximately one year following being shot in the head while
responding to a robbery near the parking garage at Caesar’s,
Atlantic City Police Officer and Local 24 Member Josh Vadell
shared his miraculously vivid memory of that horrific Sept. 3,
2016 night with those who contributed so much to his recovery.
From AtlantiCare to Atlantis in the Bahamas in one year, Vadell
stood before his union sisters and brothers at the NJ State PBA
annual convention and explained why he didn’t die.
“The warrior’s spirit,” Vadell explained. “I’m proof of that.”
As he clung to life, Vadell related about how he clung to two
thoughts: One was of his baby on the way, now 11-month old
daughter Lucy. The second was how he wasn’t going to let the
piece of spit who shot him get away with it.
“I’m bleeding out, but I’m thinking, ‘I’m pissed off that this
guy got the drop on me,’” he described to nearly 750 members
who were all silent for perhaps the only time during convention
week. “I didn’t want to be that statistic, the young officer shot in
the line of duty leaving his pregnant wife behind. The good guy
is going to win this time.”
A year later – a year after more than a dozen surgeries, includ-
50
NEW JERSEY COPS
■ OCTOBER 2017
ing a cranioplasty to rebuild the right side of his skull, shattered
by the gunshot – Vadell left his omnipresent wheelchair behind,
bounced into the grand ballroom at the Atlantis Resort and pre-
sented the most inspiring thumbs up the PBA has seen in quite
some time. The State PBA invited Vadell to the convention, along
with wife Laura and daughters Adrianna and Vienna, because
there was no more comforting venue to tell his story in full detail
really for the first time and, in the process, perhaps put all the
spit behind him.
Vadell had been invited to many of these public functions
during the past year, and asked to speak. Expected to speak,
even.
“I would use the excuse, ‘Not tonight. I have a headache,’”
Vadell quipped. Here was the first statement that he was putting
it all behind him: taking the perspective that someday, he will
look back on this and it will all seem funny. And he supplement-
ed his remarks with some memorable punch lines.
What seemed so illuminating though is that despite taking
a bullet to the head and being left with a forehead-to-neck,
Frankenstein-looking scar, Vadell can provide a second-by-sec-
ond account of what happened when he and partner Tommy
McCabe pulled up on that parking lot near Caesar’s.
Floodlights from the patrol car turned night into day, and they
could see the suspect holding a gun to a victim’s head. A robbery
appeared to be in progress, and when Vadell and McCabe saw
the victim’s pants around his ankles, they went into action.