A Texas state trooper heroically pulled an injured driver from a burning wreck just moments before the car was engulfed in flames — with the life-saving rescue caught on dramatic bodycam footage.
Trooper Cody Durham was on patrol on the Dallas North Tollway on Jan. 9 when he said he spotted smoke and sped to the scene, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
His bodycam captured everything.
“I saw smoke coming from the opposite direction of travel so I took the nearest exit possible and turned around and got there as quick as I could and by the time I arrived the vehicle had caught on fire,” Durham said in a video released by the department over the weekend.
“Sir!” the trooper tells the unidentified motorist as he gets to the scene, the footage shows.
“Help me,” the man appears to say several times.
“I’m trying,” Durham answers. “Are you hurt at all?”
The bodycam footage shows the trooper then yanking the man out of the car as the flames intensify.
“I believe once I started pulling him that that was going to be the only way to get him out, and so I just kept pulling and pulling until we were out of the car,” Durham said in the newly released video.
“Initially when it was just me there I tried to pull him back as far away from the vehicle as possible and to get as close to the shoulder, put him in a position where we could carry him and then just lifted him and just carried him back behind me, away from the fire,” he added.
EMS took the motorist to a nearby hospital as firefighters doused the flames. The extent of the man’s injuries were not disclosed.
“I just want to say that, you know, we’re all human,” the trooper said. “We’re out there everyday putting our lives into danger, putting our lives on the line to try to save somebody that’s in danger, whatever situation they’re in.”
