Trooper talks about rescuing man from car in freezing water after crash

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    HAMILTON, Ohio (WLWT ) — An Ohio State Trooper is being credited with saving the life of a passenger after a driver crashed over an embankment while fleeing police.

Trooper Shane Meyer tried to pull over a Dodge Charger Tuesday morning around 1:30 a.m. after it blew a red light. The trooper’s dashboard camera shows the car accelerate on Route 4 in Hamilton, briefly going out of view of the trooper.

The car left the road, crashing over an embankment, estimated to be at least a 50-foot drop.

“I wasn’t actively pursuing, and I wasn’t going to throughout the city,” Meyer said. “Then I realized the damage that was done on the tree line, so I went running over there and that’s when I observed the vehicle on its top in the water.”

Out of view of his cruiser’s camera, Meyer made his way down the embankment he said was muddy, steep and slick.

“The only thing going through my mind was, ‘I need to try to get whoever is in this car out.’ I could tell they were in about 2 to 4 foot of water and the top portion of the passenger cabin was completely submerged,” Meyer said.

You can hear someone screaming for help and saying, ‘I can’t breathe’ in audio from the incident.

Meyer said the 19-year-old driver was wiggling out of the back seat of the car on his own but the 20-year-old passenger was trapped and saying he could not feel his legs.

“They had to be ejected through the rear windshield and were partially trapped under the trunk. At which point, I was able to get to him. He was struggling to keep his head above water as he was belly down,” Meyer said.”I was afraid that he would have died if I wouldn’t have been there. It probably would have been a while before they were found.”

Troopers said the driver, 19-year-old Logan Morris from Hamilton, admitted he drank a lot of alcohol before crashing. The car had been stolen out of Hamilton shortly before the crash. Morris is facing numerous charges and remains in the Butler County Jail.

OSHP is consulting the prosecutor’s office about possible charges for the passenger.

The trooper who saved him said he has never been put in a similar situation but is glad he was there.

“It’s what I signed up to do. It’s what I enjoy doing. It’s another day’s work really,” Meyer said.

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