JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A woman who was carjacked Tuesday and forced to drive in a high-speed chase with police that included a shootout that left an officer wounded and a bank robbery suspect dead told News4Jax that she just wanted to survive the encounter.
"I've never been so happy to kiss the ground in my life. I've never been so happy to just be alive. Even still, it doesn't feel real," Tara Carter said.
Police initially thought Carter was the suspect's girlfriend, but corrected that Wednesday and confirmed she was the victim of a carjacking and abduction by bank robbery suspect, Joseph Harris, 28, who was wanted in connection with two bank robberies in Jacksonville this week.
Harris was fatally shot by K-9 Officer Jeremy Mason and Detective Brad Hurst, Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said.
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Mason was shot in the chin during an exchange of gunfire with Harris, Williams said. He is expected to be OK.
Police said the pursuit began when Harris was spotted in the area of 103rd Street and Old Middleburg Road, getting out of the vehicle that had been used in the bank robberies and into a silver car being driven by Carter.
Carter said it was a normal day, sitting on her porch, when a JSO vehicle drove down the street and Harris got out of his vehicle, walked up with a gun and told her to “act normal.”
Carter said Harris threw a bag over her fence, asked her who the silver car belonged to, told her to "get the **** in it" and showed her the gun. She said that she had no choice but to listen.
UNCUT: Carjacking victim shares story of police chase, shootout
(VIEWER DISCRETION: Contains some foul language)
"All I could think was, 'How do I stay alive? How do I not hit somebody? How have they not blown out my tires?'" she said. "What do I do? What do I do but drive? I don't know what he's going to do."
She said officers should have done more to protect her.
"What if I hadn't have made it? Just like the officer, yeah, I'm sorry he got shot. We all have jobs, however we do them, whatever code we follow, that's all on us. That's all in the decisions we made, but you made a decision to let my life be in jeopardy," Carter said.
Williams said a 2-mile high-speed chase ensued, during which Harris began firing shots out both of the car's back windows.
"He's telling me where to go; he's panicking," Carter recalled.
Carter said there were times she tried to slow down enough for police to spin her car or crash it without injuring anyone else driving in the area. She said she got up to nearly 60 mph, not knowing what Harris would do next.
She said that as soon as Harris started shooting, she thought she was next.
"That's all I kept screaming was, 'I'm dead. I'm dead." Bullets are flying out; bullets are flying in. He originally started firing out the window, and when he turned that barrel to fire out my back glass, I saw down it, and I saw my life. I just saw it," Carter said.
Police said Wednesday that the gun Harris used in the shootout was reported stolen out of Taylor County in 2012.
Hurst, who was in the area on an unrelated case, heard the call over the scanner and responded.
Shortly after, the pursuit came to an end at the intersection of Buttercup Street and Old Middleburg Road, where the silver car ran a stop sign and was struck by another passenger vehicle, police said. The crash sent the silver car barreling into a large brick mailbox, which was knocked over.
Williams said that's when Harris got out of the passenger side of the car, still shooting, and Mason and Hurst fired back -- shooting and killing him. Harris, a three-time convicted felon, died at the scene.
Ellisa Brown, who lives a couple houses down from where the chase ended, said she was standing even closer as shots were being fired. She said she heard eight to 10 shots, but doesn't know which guns they were fired from. She said the officers were yelling at Harris to get down and drop his gun.
"It was terrible out here, very terrible. I'm not used to seeing something like that, and last night it was terrible," Brown said.
Brown said she saw Carter pulled from the driver's seat and handcuffed on the ground. Police said she was taken into custody, questioned and released.
'Extraordinary' response, analyst says
News4Jax crime and safety analyst Gil Smith, who spent more than 20 years with JSO, said the officers had many split-second decisions to make.
"There's extreme stress that these officers are under at this point," Smith said. "They know they have to do something. He's already robbed two banks. He shot at police officers. They have to stop this guy, and he must be stopped right here, because if he gets away and goes someplace else, he could harm someone else."
Smith said that stress for Mason started when the chase began, then ramped up even more as soon as Harris started shooting, hitting the windshield of the JSO SUV at least nine times.
"To be shot at, shot in the face, and still continue to drive, that's extraordinary," Smith said. "His vision is obscured, he has those bullet holes in his windshield, now he can't see, so he has to move his head and look around to see where he's driving."
Sheriff: Officer had close call
Mason was in stable condition at last check, but Williams said that almost wasn't the case.
"There was another round in the headrest of the driver's seat," Williams said. "(If it had struck) inches away -- either way, separate rounds -- we'd be having a separate conversation right now."
WATCH: Sheriff Mike Williams' full briefing
Williams said the shootout and its outcome highlight the dangerous job officers undertake every day when they put on their uniforms.
"We talk a lot about, you know, these men and woman at JSO who put their lives on the line every single day," Williams said. "It's not a tag line. It's not a slogan. This is an example of that."
Mason, the K-9 officer who was leading the pursuit, was shot once in the chin and his patrol car was hit multiple times, yet he kept following the silver car and radioed for help, Williams said.
"We see police videos around the country where sometimes police officers abuse their power, they don't always make the right decision. More often than not, this is the heart of a police officer, what you saw in Officer Mason," Smith said. "To go out and push hard to do whatever they can to protect the public."
Photos released Wednesday by JSO show the damage done to Mason's vehicle by the gunfire.
"How much is that worth to the community to have men and women like this who do this day in and day out every single day? This is their reality. This is their reality that their family lives with, they live with every single day," Williams said. "Everyone who wears this uniform accepts this every day."
Mason was taken to UF Health hospital, where he was in "great spirits," JSO Director Mike Bruno said in a media briefing Tuesday.
"He's blessed to have sustained that kind of injury and be able to talk, and to sit up," Bruno said.
As of 11 p.m. Tuesday, Williams said, Mason was in stable condition, but still has a long road back.
"He's got a great support system in place," Williams said. "He puts himself between the suspect -- who's an incredibly violent felon -- and the community, and ultimately winds up taking that suspect down, stopping him from, again, endangering the entire community out there on the Westside. My hat's off to both of these officers involved."
Mason has earned two life-saving awards during his career. The first was in 2010, when he saved a man from drowning in the Trout River. That man ran from a traffic stop and jumped into the river, but quickly got in trouble in the current, police said.
The second award was last year, when Mason, who’s also a member of the JSO Dive Team, helped rescue a man from drowning in the St. Johns River downtown.
A GoFundMe account has been set up to help with Mason's recovery costs.
Robbery suspect's history
Minutes before Williams' news briefing Tuesday, News4Jax obtained the police report on the bank robbery Tuesday morning at the Atlantic Coast Bank on Normandy Boulevard. Harris was the suspect in that robbery, as well as in another robbery Monday of a crowded Wells Fargo bank.
According to the JSO report from the Atlantic Coast Bank robbery, he told the teller, "I'm sorry. I'm doing this for my family," and "Give me the money."
According to arrest records, Harris was first arrested by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office less than a week after he turned 18. That first arrest from 2006 was for burglary.
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A couple of months later, he was arrested for drug charges. Over the years, he was arrested a few more times for such offenses as resisting an officer without violence, dealing in stolen property and burglary.
His most recent arrest was December 2016 on grand theft charges.
News4Jax has also learned that Harris had a history of making violent threats. He had two domestic
violence injunctions against him, both from 2012.
In one, an acquaintance of Harris' said that Harris and a girlfriend followed her in their car and parked near her, “took his shirt off, threatened for me to get out of the car, and told me that he will shoot me with his gun." The woman also wrote that her newborn was in the car at the time.
In another 2012 petition, a female relative said that Harris "called me multiple times today and told me that he 'hoped that I had good homeowner’s insurance, because he was going to burn my house down.'"
She said that Harris "told me he and his girlfriend were going to take over my house and get me fired from my job. I am in fear of my life and believe he will harm me."