| Updated: 2/02 4:14 pm |
Published: 2/01 10:31 pm
|
A very different day for an Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper who saved a man who was trapped in a flooded overturned SUV.
"It's just another day. It doesn't seem any different," says Trooper Scott Shropshire.
The rollover crash happened around 1 p.m. Wednesday on Highway 169 at the Rogers/Nowata County line.
The Highway Patrol reports a driver swerved to avoid an 18-wheeler and ended up in a water-filled ditch.
OHP Trooper Scott Shropshire was about to call it a day when his partner was called to a separate crash in Rogers County. Shropshire was going to finish his day and write his reports.
However, when he heard an SUV rolled over not far from where he was in Rogers County he jumped into action.
It is not uncommon for cars to end up in ditches but Trooper Shropshire soon discovered this was not a routine call.
"Someone said ‘there's someone in there,’" says Shropshire.
The passenger was trapped in a Ford Explorer but he was alert and talking to the trooper.
"’Can you move? Move your legs’ and he was able to move his legs,” says Shropshire.
The man weighed more than 400 pounds and could not move.
The water in the ditch went up about two feet.
Troopers later said the driver was able to escape by sliding out from under the 54-year-old passenger.
"He was coughing he said 'water is my ears, I can't breath’, his neck was hurting,” says Shropshire.
The trooper called for back-up and then in the mud and muck and past broken glass he crawled through the sunroof.
"I wasn't very stable, I had one leg up here and one down here, my head going against the roof of the car,” says Shropshire.
For fifteen minutes the trooper held the trapped man’s head above the water and waited for firefighters.
"If that officer hadn't been there he probably couldn't have kept his head above water for that long,” says Northwest Rogers County Fire Protection District firefighter Steve Morgan.
There’s a good chance the passenger would not have survived.
"I hadn't thought about that yet,” says Shropshire.
More than twenty emergency crews arrived on the scene to help rescue the man but it was the trooper who kept passenger Raymond Hyatt of Leawood, Kansas alive.
"This is what Trooper Shropshire won't tell you because he's modest,” says OHP Lt. George Brown. "It was a true heroic thing that he did."
Firefighters eventually got the Kansas man out with the jaws of life.
"That guy is very fortunate the trooper was there when he was,” says Morgan.
OHP says in this situation there wasn’t much Hyatt could to save himself.
However, they say you should always have a cell phone and keep it charged in case of emergencies.
Hyatt was treated for head and internal injuries and has been released from the hospital.
The driver was treated and released.
