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More than six hundred Golfview elementary students filed out of their classrooms, and along the sidewalk on Fiske Boulevard in Rockledge today to give Brevard County Sheriff's Agent Casey Smith a hero's welcome.
"Six weeks in a hospital and now he's finally coming home," said Taylor Proctor, a second grader at Golfview.
His older brother Mason, a fourth grader, said his school wanted to send the deputy, "a very happy message."
Agent Smith was injured by gunfire in the line of duty on August 20. Smith and two fellow agents were conducting an undercover prostitution sting at the home of John Derossett in Port Saint John, when Derossett shot Smith on his front lawn. The agents returned fire and hit Smith, but both men survived their injuries. Derossett is in jail facing three charges of attempted murder on a law enforcement officer.
After six weeks and several surgeries at Orlando Regional Hospital, Agent Smith left in a donated Executive Limousine with his wife and three children to head back home to Brevard.
But before Agent Smith got there, he saw thousands of supporters along the side of the road. And when he passed Golfview Elementary, he saw students holding up signs welcoming him home.
Sheriff Wayne Ivey, who asked the public to come out and support his deputy's return, talked to his injured employee at the end of the procession.
"He was speechless," said Sheriff Ivey. "He just could not believe what he was seeing, and obviously emotional about coming home but also seeing that welcome."
Smith faces a long road to full recovery, and it's not clear when or if he will return to duty. Sheriff Ivey says agent Smith still does not have full function in his right leg where one of two bullets landed. The other struck his pelvis