A Texas police corporal yanked a trapped driver through a smashed window on a busy highway after the car's door handle broke off in his hand, and newly released footage shows just how close the rescue cut it.
Corporal Joshua Swisher of the Southlake Police Department was working an unrelated traffic stop on Highway 114 on June 7 when his superiors radioed about a smoking vehicle ahead. Dashcam footage released by the department shows a Nissan Altima pulling onto the right shoulder, billowing thick smoke across the busy highway. Swisher drove to the scene, jumped out, and sprinted down the road toward the car, which, as the New York Post reported, had already started catching fire by the time he reached it.
What happened next unfolded in seconds. Swisher grabbed the Altima's door handle. It snapped off. Dark smoke had filled the cabin so completely that the driver was invisible, except for his hands, pressing against the inside of the door.
Swisher told Fox 4 what he saw when he reached the car:
"I could not even see inside the vehicle. The only thing I saw was hands, and it was the driver trying to get his door open from the inside."
With the door jammed and the handle gone, Swisher pulled out a window breaker, smashed through the glass, and told the driver to come out through the window. He hauled the man free, then turned back to check whether anyone else was still inside, right as flames erupted from the vehicle.
The bodycam and dashcam footage, released Wednesday by the Southlake Police Department, captures the full sequence. The Altima is smoking heavily when it first appears on the shoulder. Within moments of Swisher's approach, the smoke gives way to open flame. By the time he confirms the car is empty, huge flames have consumed it.
The driver walked away without injuries. Swisher's only damage: some singed arm hair.
The department later awarded Swisher the Meritorious Conduct Award, its second-highest honor. Swisher downplayed the recognition in his interview with Fox 4:
"I think I speak for every Southlake officer when I say that if anybody had been put in that same situation, same circumstances, any other officer would have done the same thing."
Neither the Southlake Police Department nor any other agency cited in the reporting has said what caused the Nissan Altima to catch fire while it was being driven on the highway. The driver's name has not been released. Whether the vehicle was inspected afterward, or whether any road closures resulted from the blaze, remains unaddressed.
What is clear from the footage is the margin. A few more seconds, one more failed tug on that broken handle, one more moment of hesitation, and the outcome would have been different.
In a culture that spends enormous energy debating what police do wrong, it is worth pausing on what one officer did right: he ran toward the fire, not away from it, and a man is alive because of it.
