Texas officer saves driver from burning car during traffic stop

Corporal Joshua Swisher pulled a trapped driver out of a burning car on westbound State Highway 114 in Southlake after a routine traffic stop turned into a roadside emergency in seconds. Dash camera and body camera video showed Swisher sprinting toward the vehicle as smoke thickened and flames erupted beneath it.

Swisher was conducting the stop on June 7 when dispatch alerted him to a nearby vehicle with heavy smoke. Instead of staying with the speeding stop that brought him to the shoulder, he ran toward the fire, reached the car before it was fully engulfed and broke a window to get the driver out. The rescue came just seconds before the vehicle was swallowed by flames.

Southlake police later shared the video, and the footage has drawn attention because it captures how fast ordinary patrol work can become disaster intervention. One moment Swisher was handling a traffic stop on Highway 114, and the next he was forced into a life-or-death rescue on a busy North Texas roadway.

Swisher, a Southlake police corporal, described the moment as being in "the right place, right time." The rescue underscores the kind of split-second decision-making highway officers may need when smoke, fire and traffic converge with almost no warning. In this case, a driver survived because Swisher closed the distance quickly, broke the window and got the man out before the car was fully engulfed.