A tow truck driver rescued a Harris County Precinct 8 constable deputy early Tuesday after her patrol car was hit by a utility truck and it turned engulfed in flames in Pasadvertena, officers said.
Deputy K. Lemelle was parked on the shoulder of the 1300 block of East Sam Houston Parkway over San Augustine Road about 2:30 a.m. when the truck veered and slammed into the again of her SUV, immediately catching hearth. Richard Borgstrom, the tow truck driver, was driving by when he heard the collision and went To assist Lemelle, who was caught Inside the SUV’s cabin.
Borgstrom said smoke and the deployed airbags madverte seeing Contained in the SUV troublesome, however he noticed Lemelle’s shiny fingernails as she was trapped inside. He tried punching the window To interrupt it, however when That did not work he grabbed a trailer hitch and smashed the glass.
“She was dazed,” said Borgstrom. “She was utterly out of it. She was Inside the Tahoe suffocating,”
Borgstrom, who works for a repossession agency in Pasadvertena, said the smoke madverte respiration troublesome when pulling her out, so two people from the utility truck assisted him.
“When the smoke and chemical compounds hit me, I couldn’t even breathe,” he said. “I started gagging mechanically. … But I wasn’t going To go away her Inside there and let her die.”
After Lemelle was rescued, concern turned to the ammunition in her engulfed SUV, Borgstrom said.
“The bullets started going off,” he said. “We have been ducking behind automobiles.”
Lemelle, A 3-yr deputy Who’s assigned to the Evening time shift on a patrol division, was taken to Southeast Memorial Hospital with non-life-threatening accidents and was launched Tuesday, officers said. …….