White Settlement police officers saved a family of four from a car submerged halfway in rushing flood waters Saturday, using jumper cables as a makeshift rope to pull the mother to safety.
White Settlement police chief Christopher Cook told KERA the unidentified woman ran over a curb Saturday into a storm drainage ditch while trying to turn her car around because the road, Western Hills Boulevard, was flooded with rain.
“‘Turn around, don’t drown,’ that’s what she was trying to do,” Cook said.
Sergeant John Banner was on standby that night under a covered parking spot during a storm when he saw the car leaning into a storm drainage ditch, Cook said.
Body camera footage shows Banner pulling up to the scene and moving her three kids, who had already escaped from the ditch, into the back of his squad car. But the woman was half seated in the car with her legs in the rushing waters, unable to get fully back in.
“Stay where you’re at. Don’t lose your footing,” Banner yelled to the woman over the rain.
“My shoe's already gone. I’m losing it,” the woman replied after asking Banner if all her children were safe.
Officer Chris Wiseman pulled onto the scene and approached to help, and Banner told him he needed something to wrap around the woman so they could secure her. Wiseman ran to the trunk of his squad car and briefly rustled through his car before grabbing jumper cables.
While Wiseman ran over with the cables, Banner yelled to his radio, “the car’s getting pushed, and I can’t grab her.”
The two officers then tied the cable around the woman’s chest and held on to her for about 15 minutes before the fire department arrived and began towing the car out of the ditch.
Cook told KERA his department has already purchased and received water rescue equipment for officers in case a similar incident happens again.
But, he said, the jumper cables did work in a pinch.
“Luckily for us we carry the really long jumper cables, so it was so long she was able to wrap it around her chest and still it would go all the way to the back of the vehicle,” Cook said. “It was just kind of an innovative, creative thing at first until the fire department could get there.”
Dylan Duke is KERA's Breaking News Reporter. Got a tip? Email Dylan Duke at dduke@kera.org.
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