Police dashcam footage emerged Monday showing a drunk driver in Fort Worth, Texas slamming into a police officer performing a routine traffic stop.
Officer Matt Lesell pulled over a vehicle Monday evening and approached the driver’s side window, which faced the freeway. He can be seen in the video speaking with the occupant when a speeding car driven by a drunk driver crashes into the rear of the first car and throws Lesell into the air.
Lesell flips through the air onto the drunk driver’s car and stumbles into the road, only to walk away just seconds later.
“Every time I watch it, I’m still surprised it was not worse,” Lesell told the Star-Telegram on Monday. “My job is going to accidents and seeing horrific events, and I’ve seen accidents that don’t look nearly that bad, but there were worse injuries. I’m lucky with how it turned out.”
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Lesell suffered a hyperextended foot and a fractured vertebra and will be unable to work for a month, the paper reported. Fortunately for the officer, the speeding driver slammed into the rear of the parked car before hitting Lesell.
“Next thing I knew I was flying through the air. It felt like I was spinning through a washing machine,” Lesell told NBC 5. “Your body goes into trauma mode. Pain-wise, you don’t feel much. You just know something bad happened and the body does amazing things to limit the pain. All I knew was that I was hit. I kept spitting, and because it was bloody and I didn’t know where it was coming from, I knew it was bad.”
The driver, Mike Mitchell, 34, was arrested for drunk driving immediately following the crash.
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