Lt. Doug Ventre retired from the Clermont County Sheriff's Office in December, but Saturday night he was called back into service.

The man he had groomed to take his place at the helm of the county's special response team had been shot. Another deputy, handpicked by Ventre for the team,he would soon learn, was shot dead.

And the suspect was still holed up in his apartment firing at police.

It was Ventre's wife who got him out of bed Saturday, he said. As part of his retirement, Ventre said he also retired from carrying a cell phone all the time. He had three missed calls related the ongoing standoff on Saint Andrews Drive.

He called back to a member of the special response team first. he said.

"You could tell they were struggling," Ventre told The Enquirer on Tuesday. "I said, 'I'm on my way.' "

On the way to the scene, he learned that Clermont County Deputy Bill Brewer had been killed and Lt. Nick DeRose was shot.

With no police radio and driving his own car, he made it to the scene where a deputy was waiting to escort him to the apartment, he said.

Ventre not only helped start Clermont County's special response team, but also previously served as the commander of the Cincinnati police SWAT team for years.

Once he arrived at the scene, he said the deputies continued to try to talk with the suspect and fired tear gas canisters into the apartment. They were met with more gunfire, he said.

He looked around at the team and saw officers had already been through a lot, he said. So he made the decision to call Assistant Chief Paul Neudigate of the Cincinnati Police Department and ask the Cincinnati SWAT team for help.

With the teams together, the leadership at the scene made the decision to use a ram extension on an armored vehicle to break open the window of the apartment so they could at least see the suspect, Ventre recalled.

"Once we got the window out, all hell broke loose," Ventre said.

The intense gunfire coming from the apartment sent the veteran lawman rushing for cover behind an armored vehicle, he said.

"I remember the rounds kicking past me and thinking, 'I'm supposed to be retired,' " Ventre said.

The team continued to take down portions of the wall with the ram until the deputies and officers could see the suspect, Ventre said. Even after the front wall was down, the suspect continued to hide behind a mattress, he said.

He said without visual contact, no one could shoot at the suspect.

New volleys of tear gas and pepper balls were lobbed into the apartment, but the suspect remained hidden, according to Ventre.

Then a fire started. Ventre said it was small at first and the suspect worked to turn it into a full grown blaze.

Eventually, the mattress caught fire and the gunman, who the sheriff's office has identified as Wade Winn, leaped from the building, Ventre said. He added that the deputies could see, at that point, Winn was unarmed.

Winn was taken into custody and firefighters rushed in to extinguish the blaze, according to an Anderson Township Fire Department report.

The Clermont County Sheriff's Office said Tuesday it had no contact with Winn or made any runs to his apartment in at least the past two years.

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Ventre said it would have been easy to open fire on the apartment, but the team followed protocol. Without a clear view of the suspect, there was no way to know if he had a hostage, he said.

He said the tactics used throughout the encounter were sound, particularly those used by Brewer and DeRose.

"This guy had set up an ambush," Ventre said.

He told The Enquirer that Brewer and DeRose only entered the apartment after they heard a single gunshot, a man gurgling and then silence.

"They were trying to offer aid to someone who they thought committed suicide," he said.

Ventre said as the deputies entered the apartment, the suspect opened fire from a separate room through a wall, flanking the men and shooting them from the side.

"I fully support their actions," he said. "There wasn't anything else they could do short of just saying, 'We're not going in.'

"Doing nothing is not an option," he added.

He said he was amazed at the level of professionalism and composure the special response team showed.

"They held the line," he said.

Brewer is the first deputy in the county to be killed in the line of duty since 1966, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, a database of line-of-duty deaths.

The police union president in Clermont County, Deputy Rick DePuccio, has set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Brewer's wife and son. By Tuesday night, it had raised about $20,000.