COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- A Columbus Division of Police officer is speaking out after she saved a man from a burning truck one week ago, with the whole encounter being caught on police body camera video.
Columbus officer Gloria West has been with the Columbus Division of Police for less than a year, saying she joined the division to help people.
“Someone needed help and that's our job to answer," West said.
Around 4:40 a.m. last Wednesday, a man called 911 to alert them that he crashed his truck into a bridge near Polaris. He said his truck was on fire and he was trapped inside with a broken ankle.
When West and her partner arrived, they started looking for a way inside the truck.
“Someone needed help, that's our training,” West said. “I mean, you see someone burning to death. I mean, it's kind of extreme to go through. I couldn't even imagine, that's probably what my biggest fear is, and we just needed to get them out.”
In the body camera footage, West’s partner called for her to back up and be careful, but West continued toward the flames anyway.
“He was still in there,” she said. “I could hear a male voice that wasn't my partner, so we knew that he was still alive and we had to get him out.”
West said the rear driver's side door was unlocked, so she started to yell for him.
“I couldn't really see anything, just more of his silhouette against the flames in the background, but I could see where he was kind of turned a little bit toward the back seat, and so I was able to yell in and tell him to reach for my hand hoping he could see it, and once I felt, I just kind of just pulled over everything I had,” West said.
West got the man away from the truck just in time because the flames started to engulf the entire vehicle.
West said that she tried to make the man comfortable while they waited for the medics. She said his clothes were still on fire so they tried to get them off so the burns were not worse.
“We waited with him and we just kept him stable, kept talking to him and making sure he stopped saying he was going to die and try to get some positive energy going on there,” she said.
West suffered some burns to her hands but said it was worth it to save a life. She said looking back on the incident, she would do it all the same.
The man inside the truck was taken to the hospital to be treated for burn injuries, where he is in stable condition.
