In the first years after Ramsey County Sheriff’s Deputy Roger Rosengren was fatally shot, Mike Tatsak would find himself drawn to the spot where it happened each January.

Tatsak, also a sheriff’s deputy and a witnesss to the killing, would silently talk to Rosengren and think about the “what ifs.”

Forty-eight years have passed since a 17-year-old patient murdered Rosengren on Jan. 28, 1971, inside St. Paul-Ramsey Hospital — now Regions.

Tatsak and retired Ramsey County Sheriff’s Division Cmdr. Don Johnson said they can never forget the 37-year-old father of three, but they worry that his story will fade as time passes.

“There’s not too many of us left who were there,” said Johnson, 84. “I think it’s sad that people don’t know or remember what happened to him.”

After Gregory M. Seifert killed Sgt. Rosengren on Jan. 28, 1971, he took a doctor hostage and held a gun to his head.

In a series of dramatic photographs on the front page of the next day’s newspaper, St. Paul Pioneer Press photographer Spence Hollstadt captured what happened as Seifert left the hospital while holding the hostage around the neck.

St. Paul Police Lt. LeRoy Thielen disarmed Seifert with the assistance of Sgt. Russ Bovee, who was disguised as a doctor in a white lab coat. Seifert was sent to prison.

‘HE’S GOT A GUN!’

After Rosengren died, Tatsak’s thoughts focused on how it could have ended differently.

Tatsak was 24 and in good shape. Rosengren, who lived down the street from him, used to call him the “The Kid.”

“I would try to picture, ‘What if everything was just switched around?’ ” Tatsak said recently. “Would I have been able to subdue him and just get wounded, or subdue him and nothing happened, and we’d both be alive today?”

But it all happened too fast that Thursday afternoon.

Another man, Steven Hawke, was being released from St. Paul-Ramsey Hospital to be transferred to the Ramsey County jail. A woman had smuggled a gun into the hospital to Hawke, who left the weapon under his mattress, according to newspaper articles from the time.

As Tatsak escorted Hawke from the locked psychiatric unit, he heard Rosengren’s footsteps behind him. He was holding the door for Rosengren when someone shouted, “Look out, he’s got a gun!”

The door to the unit snapped shut, and Tatsak was horrified to see through the window that Seifert, who had shared a hospital room with Hawke, had a gun.

Rosengren “kind of bear-hugged” Seifert, trying to get the gun away from the teen, but Seifert shot the sergeant twice, Tatsak said. Seifert then pointed the gun at Tatsak through the window, and the deputy jumped to the side.

TOOK A DOCTOR HOSTAGE

Tatsak ran down the stairs to call police and then to the first floor, where officers were required to lock up their guns. He raced back to the eighth floor with his service weapon.

Seifert had taken Dr. Stephen Pliska hostage. “He grabbed him around the neck, and he had the hammer cocked on the gun,” Tatsak said.

They tried to negotiate with Seifert, but he wouldn’t allow anyone to get to Rosengren to check his condition, and he was screaming that he wanted to get out. Tatsak used his key to open the door to the ward.

Seifert, still holding Pliska at gunpoint, headed out of the unit.

Tatsak, Johnson and others rushed to Rosengren and rolled him over. He had been shot in the chest, “and he was gone,” Tatsak said.

Meanwhile, officers Thielen and Bovee came up with a plan. They donned white doctor’s coats and approached Seifert, with Thielen telling the teen he would drive him wherever he wanted to go.

As Seifert walked out of the hospital, Thielen got his hand around the cylinder of Seifert’s gun, preventing it from firing. Bovee swept in, and Pliska turned on his captor. The three wrestled the teen to the ground.

DARK DAYS FOR DEPUTY’S FAMILY

Johnson, who had hurried to the hospital from his work at the jail, headed to Rosengren’s home in North St. Paul to notify his wife.

The deputies were good friends.

“We were close in age, we both worked together in the old county jail, we were both promoted to sergeant on the same day in 1964, we both had three kids, we both had three-bedroom ramblers in the suburbs, and we fished together,” Johnson said.

Dark days lay ahead for Donna Rosengren and her three children, who were then 8, 11 and 13, said Johnson, who stayed in contact with her. Donna remarried but has since died.

GUNMAN WENT TO PRISON A SECOND TIME

Seifert was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison.

He was imprisoned until 1979 and was charged again in 1985 after he used a knife to wound a Minnesota State Patrol trooper who pulled him over, according to a newspaper article from the time. He was convicted of attempted murder.

Around that time, when Seifert was locked up, he was brought into Regions. Tatsak saw him as he was coming in and asked him, “Remember me?”

“That was a long time ago,” Seifert said, according to Tatsak.

“I said, ‘Not long enough’ and that was the end of our conversation,” Tatsak said.

Seifert was released from prison in 1992 and completed his parole in 1997. He died in 2016 at age 63 at his St. Paul Park residence of congestive heart failure, according to the Ramsey County medical examiner’s office.

Tatsak was a Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy for 31 years and opted to spend most of it working at Regions.

“After this all happened, I felt it was my territory,” said Tatsak, now 72. “I really did it to honor Roger.”