Lake County Deputy Sheriff Bradley Michael Link was shot and killed while trapped inside a Eustis home Friday night after responding to a call about a disturbance, according to Sheriff Peyton Grinnell.
Two other deputies also were shot in the shootout at the mobile home on Brookside Drive in the Orlando Hills neighborhood, Grinnell said.
One of the injured deputies was reported in serious critical condition after being shot multiple times in the stomach and groin, according to officials. The third deputy was reported in stable condition after being shot in the shoulder.
Two people inside the home were shot and killed. The Sheriff’s Office has not released any further details regarding the disturbance and whether the shooters lived at the home.
Link, 28, was involved with the Sheriff’s Office Explorer program as a teenager and graduated from Lake Minneola High School. He served in the Army Reserves before becoming a deputy sheriff in Polk County in 2017. Two years later, Link joined the Lake County Sheriff’s Office as a master deputy.
Link “touched the lives of all who were blessed enough to work with him,” Grinnell said in a written statement released by the Sheriff’s Office. “His contributions and the impact of this loss will not soon be forgotten.”
Grinnell said he didn’t know if the people inside the home were killed by deputies returning fire or if it was a murder-suicide.
“It was a very violent scene,” Grinnell said, adding that there was no ongoing threat to the public.
The slain deputy was one of the two deputies who initially responded to the call in the rural neighborhood.
The incident began about 8 p.m. when Link and the other deputy responded to calls about a disturbance at a home. After arriving on the scene, the deputies were alerted to a separate disturbance at another nearby home where they could hear shouting and found the back door kicked in, the sheriff said.
“When the deputies entered the home, there was a lot of gunfire where one of the deputies was struck,” Grinnell said. “The backup deputy that was there with him was able to retreat out of the home. The first deputy [Link] was trapped inside of the home.”
Several deputies arrived on scene and formed a rescue team to get to the injured deputy still inside the home, he said.
“They were just met with a hail of gunfire, a lot of gunfire,” Grinnell said.
Deputies retreated and formed a SWAT team, the sheriff said. A third deputy was struck at some point during that rescue attempt.
“We tore apart the home so that we could get the deputy out of there,” Grinnell said. He added that deputies found “multiple, multiple firearms inside that home, from long guns to handguns.”
“It’s just horrific when you have one of your own inside of a home and you can’t get to him,” he said.
Law enforcement from the FBI, Florida Department of Law Enforcement and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also arrived on scene.
The names of deputies involved were not released, but Grinnell said the slain deputy had been with the Sheriff’s Office for many years.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will investigate the shooting.
Link is survived by his wife, Brittany; and his parents, Christi and Daniel, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
“It’s going to be a long time before we get back to a sense of normal,” Grinnell said.
Sheriff Office officials said deputies have responded several times to calls regarding animal complaints to the home on a dirt road off County Road 439 in northeast Lake County.
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