A North Texas man was saved last Friday thanks to the quick actions of police officers in The Colony after a car crashed and got trapped between two barriers on an overpass.
Authorities said they responded to a major collision around 1:23 a.m. in the 5700 block of South Colony Boulevard at Highway 121 on July 19.
The Colony Police Department shared a dramatic video on social media from Officer Edwardo Hernandez's body camera, which showed the intense moments when officers arrived at the scene. They found a car pinned between two dividing barriers along the southbound and northbound lanes of the overpass.
The adrenaline-fueled moment was the climax of an incident that began minutes earlier when witness Jersey Goldman was driving home on the overpass. He was the first person to the wreck and didn’t see anyone moving inside.
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“I look, and literally, it is a vehicle dropped in between the concrete barriers on each side,” said Goldman.
“I immediately call 911. And as I’m on the phone with The Colony Police Department, a flame sparks under the front side of the vehicle.”
Hernandez and others used their extinguishers to put out the flames, but the electric car wouldn’t stop burning.
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“I can see the car’s starting to fire up so I grab my fire extinguisher,” Hernandez said, a sworn officer with the department since 2022.
“I make the decision that, at this point, this car’s on fire. I’m going to go back there, and I’m going to try to get this driver out. In my mind, I’m just thinking to myself, I’m not going to let this guy die on me."
Hernandez can be seen in the video rushing to the vehicle with a Halligan tool that works like a heavy pickaxe, and the officer swings three times until he smashes the window and yanks it down. He then cut the airbag, revealing the disoriented driver, who could be heard repeatedly saying, “I’m okay.”
“And at that point I’m like hey come on, you got to get out, your car’s on fire,” Hernandez said. “He starts to put his hands out the window. I grab onto him, and I start to guide him out of the vehicle.”
The video shows Hernandez pulling the driver from the window, and then other officers helped him move the man away from the wreck to a safer distance. Within minutes, the car would become consumed by flames.
“And if those officers hadn’t gotten there, particularly Officer Hernandez, the results could have been insanely different than what they were,” said Goldman.
Witnesses have called Officer Hernandez a hero for his actions. He said his training and his religious faith helped him through.
“Through that, I was able to help this person, save his life and be able to see another day,” Hernandez said. “So for me, that makes me feel that I’ve made a difference, definitely in someone’s life.”
The driver was taken to a local hospital with injuries related to the crash. Hernandez told NBC 5 that he later found out the driver was alert and recovering at the hospital following the rescue.
An officer was also taken to the hospital for further evaluation for smoke inhalation and is expected to be okay. According to the police department, the other officers were all checked out by paramedics on the scene and released back to duty.
