Deputy Doesn't Remember Husband After Violent Beating By Shoplifter

Orange County sheriff's investigators think they know who the man was that beat one of their deputies outside the Office Depot on North Semoran Boulevard.

"I really thought I was going to lose my wife," said Angel Cadiz.

SLIDESHOW: Images From The Scene

When Cadiz first looked into the eyes of his wife's bruised and swollen face, she stared back at a stranger.

"I said 'do you know I am.' She looked straight at me and said 'no'" Cadiz recounted.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office said Deputy Gayle Cadiz suffered serious head trauma after a suspected shoplifter punched her in the face and knocked her out cold. Surveillance video showed an Office Depot employee asking her to stop the man who was trying to escape with a $17 plastic mat.

Cadiz's husband said hours later at the hospital, she thought she was still at the scene.

"She was calling people to the perimeter locations for people to go to the witness, telling them to do this and that," Cadiz said.

Surveillance pictures were taken at a Wal-Mart located two miles from the scene, just before the attack. The man who is circled is wearing the same clothes as the shoplifter.

Tuesday, Sheriff Kevin Beary is leading a squad of detectives who are working overtime to catch Cadiz's attacker and charge him with attempted murder.

"I want this sucker caught," Beary said.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office is offering a $5,000 reward for anyone with information about Cadiz's suspected attacker. Her family is urging the woman who drove the shoplifter's getaway car to come forward.

The beating isn't the first time Cadiz, a wife and mother, has been injured in the line of duty. Two years ago, Deputy Cadiz was seriously injured by a drunk driver while on the job.

Cadiz had been back on the streets less than a month when she was attacked over the weekend.