AMBUSHED OFFICER UPDATE: News Is NOT Good, Community Turns Out In Support In the flurry of police officer shootings that resulted in a number of dead officers and quite a few horrid injuries, one of the first non-fatal victims was Officer Mike Flamion of the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin. On the day of the shooting, July 8, after he was out of surgery, the rumors started: hell make it, but hes paralyzed. Without official word, it was never reported by news media. On Monday, that devastating news was confirmed. Due to being shot in the neck, Flamion is paralyzed from the neck down. Ballwin brass revealed the heartbreaking diagnosis for Officer Michael Flamion, 31, who was wounded when a bullet pierced his neck during the July 8 attack. The gunshot caused catastrophic damage to his spinal cord, officials said. The felon who shot Flamion, Antonio Taylor, was on parole from federal prison on a weapons charge. He remains in jail on three felony counts including first-degree assault on a police officer, essentially attempted murder. Taylor was stopped for speeding, and got out of the car to shoot Officer Flamion in the back and neck as he was walking toward his patrol car. (His fellow inmates at Potosi, when he gets there, will help this man understand the error of his ways.) Almost immediately, a local woman who went through her own ordeal with injuries following a car accident, began to mobilize the community to help Flamion as she knew the medical bills will be substantial. Ballwin native Katie Zaitz-Fink said she knew Flamion faced a long road to recovery as soon as she heard hed been shot through the neck about two miles from her home. A car accident in 1997 in Jacksonville, Fla., left Zaitz-Fink with a herniated neck injury for nine months. I had substantial medical bills, and my injury was nowhere near the severity of his, she said. I knew he was going to have a much harder road to recovery. She wanted to do something to help. He risked his own life for me and the Ballwin community every day without a second thought, she said. Its only right that we support him in return. In Ballwin, one of the large, middle class suburbs in west St. Louis County (where this writer needs a GPS to find anything), the sense of community is very strong and the people responded to the calls for help. All of this support accompanied the bad news on Monday. Flamion remains in intensive care in one of the St. Louis areas top hospitals. He is on a ventilator and is alert. He does recognize family members, and tries to communicate. And, as of Monday, Flamion will forever be a member of the Ballwin Police Department. 