Photos for Headline Surfer / Orange City Mayor Tom Laputka is an experienced municipal leader, but her's not very good at photoshop, which is why he should be dunked at the upcoming National Night Out event.ORANGE CITY, Fla. -- For just a buck, you'll get three shots at dunking Mayor Tom Laputka or Orange City Police Detective Sherif El-Shami into a water tank on Tuesday during Orange City's National Night Out at Dickinson Park.
The city-sponsored event will take place at Dickinson Park, from 6 to 8 p.m. 120, East Graves Ave. Proceeds from the dunking event will benefit the Orange City PD Police Explorers.
You'll have three chances to "dunk one of these guys into a tank of water!" the mayor said smugly and tauntingly, adding, "See you Tuesday!"
Sherif was promoted to detective in 2012, three years after exchanging gunfire with a man and the cop lost his left eye from one of the rounds. He returned to active patrols three months later with a prosthetic eye.
On March 25, 2009, El-Shami was on patrol when he heard backup was being summoned for a Volusia County sheriff's deputy checking on the well-being of a suicidal individual named Bryan Langford at 1651 E. University Ave. near Orange City.
El-Shami was closest and got to the residence first, but he was ambushed by Langford, who was armed with a high-powered rifle. El-Shami's patrol car was hit nearly half a dozen times five times - one of the rounds ricocheting on the door near El-Shami's head. A fragment from the shattered bullet took out his left eye. Langford, who had shot and killed his girlfriend and her son in a dispute over a bar they owned, killed himself as a Sheriff's SWAT team closed in on the house after a lengthy standoff.
The National Night out is part of a recognition of crime victims and neighborhood vigilance against criminals preying on them in cities across the country.