Weird, Violent Nightmare

This is the first time I've had a significant nightmare, at least as far as I can remember. It woke me up in the middle of the night, heart pounding.

I don't remember too many details, but I was in a police station. No police station that I was familiar with or had ever been to, (I've been to a few, I'm an EMT and work with police officers occasionally), but all of the police officers I recognized as my police officers friends. I was there with a friend, an EMT coworker. And we basically just walked back and forth through the building a couple times with one or two police officers. The second time we walked through, something happened with an inmate and he escaped custody and started attacking the police officers. We quickly ran away, up some stairs, to what I believe was a waiting room, but we could oversee everything happening downstairs. As things began to die down and the man was taken back into custody, another one of our police officer friends walked in. There was a clearly disgruntled man in the waiting room, and he walked down the stairs into the main part of the station. Me and my coworker and our police officer friend walked downstairs behind him as the disgruntled man was yelling things. My coworker, who is the kind to pick fights, said something in response to what he said, I don't remember, something about citizenship. Our police officer friend sarcastically said "Good job", as what my coworker said obviously set the man off. He went off and attacked police officers with a knife he took from his pocket. My police officer friend and my coworker both went up to go fight and take the man down, while I ran back up to the waiting room where I could safely watch from upstairs. Multiple police officers, as well as my coworker were all on the ground and seemed to be dead or severely injured. Blood everywhere. Things like that. But the disgruntled man with the knife was still up and looking for more victims Wanting to stay far away from him, I exited the building. As I exited a few more police officers ran inside the station to go against him, and I remember just a feeling of immense fear both for my own life, and for the lives of those police officers that just ran into the building knowing they were probably about to be killed.

I walked across the street. I was in a town I didn't recognize and have never been to before, but something tells me it was Colorado or something (I've never been there, I'm from New Jersey). Across the street I found a female friend of mine. She had no idea about what just happened in there, even though I was shaking with fear. Night was beginning to fall. We were walking with more friends up the street to get dinner. As we were walking to dinner, a couple ambulances and a fire truck passed by us going towards the police station, seemingly to take care of all the casualties.

I then woke up. I was shaking, and my heart was pounding. I checked my heart rate and it was up around 120 beats per minute, I'm normally around 60-70 beats per minute. I was legitimately afraid when I woke up. I had the image of that scene and the face of that disgruntled man in my mind until I fell back asleep.

I have never experienced anything like this before. It feels good just to sort of get it off my chest and written down somewhere, but any insight on what this dream might mean if anything?

The police station could mean a number of things, such as a jailhouse or hospital, or perhaps it is precognition of some sort. Maybe the next time you see one of your police officer friends, ask them if there are any interesting stories about some inmates escaping.

It may be caused by PTSD. What you do for a living is pretty hard on the psyche.