ST. LOUIS – Harrowing moments from a 2023 police shootout in Soulard are being revealed on video for the first time. The video is now available because the case closed with a conviction, at which point FOX 2 News requested the video under the Missouri Sunshine Law.

The intense moments followed a Feb. 2, 2023, police pursuit, after which two officers take fire from a man with a ghost gun. The shootout began within seconds of officers stopping a robbery suspect.

“Hands up! Hands up!” you can hear an officer scream right before hearing a volley of more than a dozen gunshots.

Two St. Louis officers were shot in the gun battle. You can hear one of them yell, “I’m hit! I’m hit! I’m hit!”

Another officer, who’d also been shot, runs after the suspect, firing and reloading.

“Get on the ground!” you can hear him yell to the suspect.

The suspect surrendered after being shot in the ankle. The arresting officer finally has time to tend to his own gunshot wound.

“I’ve been shot,” he said. “In the back.”

Officers Lucas Roethlisberger and Sean Miskovic survived. Police reported finding fentanyl, crack cocaine, and Xanax in the suspect’s possession and said that he’d thrown his weapon into a dumpster—a gun reportedly assembled with random, untraceable parts.

Cortez Darrell Sipes, 38, was sentenced to 20 years in prison last November after pleading guilty to drug trafficking as well as assault and resisting arrest for shooting the two officers. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department says both officers recovered from their injuries and returned to active duty.

“Every chief’s, every officer’s nightmare,” St. Louis Police Chief Robert Tracy said after the sentencing. “To hear that two officers had been shot, sent to separate hospitals. And thank God both of them pulled through on this.”

Officer Roethlisberger later participated in a Guns ‘N Hoses fundraiser boxing event. He spoke with FOX 2 at the event, telling us about his gratitude about surviving not only this shooting but another one 13 years earlier while on duty.

“I’m very, very blessed and very thankful that I’m able to do what I do right now,” Roethlisberger said. “I have several police officer friends who have been shot, hurt severely, that cannot do the same things I’m doing.”