Left to right: Isabella Lovadina; Gina Stallis and her sons 

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Off-duty St. Louis police officer Isabella Lovadina put her bulletproof vest and pistol in her car and turned to give herthen-boyfriend, Nick Koenig, a goodnight hug.  A heartbeat later, two men approached with guns, intending to rob them. Lovadina couldn’t stop it. The botched robbery and home invasionleft her grievously wounded, Koenig with a bullet in his throat and one woman dead. Lovadina relives the harrowing night in a powerful edition of 48 HOURS MYSTERY entitled “LIVE TO TELL: An Officer and a Hero,” airing Saturday, May 19 (10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

“I thought I was going to die,” Lovadina explains on LIVE TO TELL of the Oct. 5, 2009 attack. “I thought everyone was going to die and that was my breaking point. I thought, ‘I’m not going to let this happen. I’m not going to let somebody kill me while I’m on my knees with my head on the ground. I’m not going to go out that way.’”

That October night, Lovadina had gone to Koenig’s grandmother’s house to study for the emergency medical technicians class they were taking. She was a pretty cop. He was a fireman.

Then two men wearing hoodies forced them inside, where Koenig’s cousin, Gina, her two children, his aunt and his grandmother were staying. They lined the women up in a hallway and threatened to kill them. Lovadina thought they were all going to be shot.

“I looked down the barrel of a gun,” Lovadina says, “and with everything that I had in me, I lunged towards the guy with the black hoodie and – and I just began to fight.”

The pow, pow, pow of gunshots filled the home. Gina was dead.

“These two men went into this house and they literally terrorized four generations of this family,” prosecutor Beth Orwick says to LIVE TO TELL.

Family members and investigators describe the horrific night, the search for the killers and the efforts to bring them to justice.

“I look at my life differently now,” Lovadina explains to LIVE TO TELL. “I see how, how fragile it really is and how it can be taken away so fast and – without – without any notice.”

LIVE TO TELL is a short-run series from the producers of 48 HOURS MYSTERY delivering first-hand accounts of extraordinary people who refuse to give up when facing death.  

This broadcast is produced by Shoshanah Wolfson and Sara Rodriguez. Judy Tygard is the series creator.  Al Briganti is the executive editor.  Susan Zirinsky is the senior executive producer.  Doreen Schechter, Joan Adelman and Atticus Brady are the producer-editors.

The primetime broadcast entitled “LIVE TO TELL: An Officer and A Hero” will air on Saturday, May 19 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

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Press Contact:  Richard Huff      212-975-3328    huffr@cbsnews.com