Wounded trooper returns to duty

Tuesday, January 18th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Kerry Massie held up his metal chest plate bearing a bullet-size dent Tuesday as he described the way he plans to approach his job from now on. "There's no such thing as a routine traffic stop," Massie said on his first day back on the job since he was injured in a shootout with a motorist who Massie pulled over on Dec. 29 near Cache. "I think my traffic stops will be a little more cautious," Massie said at a news conference where he credited God, his protective vest and police survival training for sustaining only minor injuries in the shootout.

"I wouldn't call my deeds heroic," said Massie, 32, who has been with the patrol for more than eight years. He said any other trooper would have reacted the same way. "He loves his job," said Massie's wife, Tiffany, who attended the news conference with the couple's 13-month-old son, Brock. Mrs. Massie said she learned that her husband had been injured by listening to the police scanner the couple keeps next to their bed. "I know he is a good trooper. I feel confident that he will go and do the best job," she said.

Public Safety Commissioner Bob Ricks said Massie "looked death right in the eye and did not blink." "It would be my hope that others would work with such bravery and professionalism," Ricks said.

Massie said he pulled over a pickup truck he had seen weaving near the intersection of U.S. 62 and Oklahoma 115 and ordered the driver, Daniel Dean Warren, 43, of Oklahoma City to get out of the vehicle. As Massie approached the vehicle, the door flew open and the driver opened fire little more than a yard away from Massie, striking him in the chest plate. Massie also sustained a wound to his left wrist. "I never felt the bullet hit me. I never felt it hit my chest," Massie said.

Massie said he ran to his vehicle and returned fire. Warren got back in his truck and drove for nearly a mile before pulling to the side of the road and veering into a ditch. Massie followed and waited for backup. After troopers were unable to contact the driver, officials approached the truck and found the driver dead.

The Oklahoma Medical Examiner's office later ruled that Warren died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Massie is one of two state troopers injured in the line of duty in little more than one week. Lt. Tom Downs, 48, was critically injured on Jan. 6 when he was run over by a car driven by a fleeing suspect, authorities said. Ricks said Downs remained in a coma Tuesday and was in stable condition after undergoing tracheotomy surgery.