Lincoln (NE) Police Sergeant Saved Woman from Pond after Crash

Andrew WegleyLincoln Journal Star, Neb.(TNS)

He was only a few hours into his shift on the Lincoln Police Department's Southeast Team when Sgt. Tu Tran heard the distinctive sound of a rescue alarm call blare across his radio Wednesday evening.

Tran, a 14-year veteran of the Police Department, was preparing to lead an active shooter training at Scheels in south Lincoln when the call came through: a car had slid off Yankee Hill Road and into a pond near Executive Woods Drive.

Two miles away at the sporting goods store, Tran realized he was the closest responder to the scene, so he headed south down 27th Street toward Yankee Hill Road, unsure of what, exactly, he would encounter when he arrived at the pond, a water hazard on the golf course at Wilderness Ridge.

As he drove — still about a mile from the crash scene — a clearer picture of what awaited him began to emerge over the police scanner.

The Hyundai Elantra that slid off the road and into the waterway was sinking, its front half already submerged in the pond. And the driver, a 27-year-old woman, hadn't escaped.

So Tran, a Vietnam native who moved to Lincoln with his family when he was 5 years old, activated his cruiser's emergency sirens and, despite the icy conditions that forced the Elantra into the pond moments earlier, sped toward the crash scene.

Before he even stepped out of his cruiser, Tran said, he had come to terms with the reality before him.

It was 23 degrees at the time.

With the wind chill, it felt like 4.

The car and its driver would be fully submerged in moments.

"And so I decided to jump in," Tran told the Journal Star Thursday afternoon.

He removed his service belt and Kevlar vest, and waded into the frigid water, carrying only a pocket knife with him in case he needed to break through one of the car's windows.

Tran reached the sedan and tried the handle of a rear door, not expecting it to be unlocked.

"And it opened," he recalled. "Amazingly, it opened."

He couldn't see the driver, who had swum into the back seat as her car began to sink, below the water's murky surface.

So Tran dropped his knife and threw both hands inside the car, navigating the backseat with the only sense he could.

"I felt her legs," he said. "So I just yanked."

The woman reached for the sergeant as he pulled her from the car. Tran, who said he is not a strong swimmer, towed the woman back toward a group of bystanders waiting to provide aid at the shore.

He asked her if there had been any passengers in the car, which disappeared beneath the water's surface moments after he pulled her out.

"I was just praying, ‘Oh, please, please say ‘no,'" Tran recalled. "‘Please say ‘no.’ Because I don't know how I could get back in there. And I was probably gonna try and get back in there."

Tran's boots had grown heavy and the bitter cold was starting to catch up with him.

"So right when she said, ‘No,’ that was a big sigh of relief," he said.

The group of fellow first responders and bystanders who had gathered near the pond helped pull the woman to land before Lincoln Fire and Rescue crews took her by ambulance to a local hospital. Her condition was unknown Thursday.

A man who was standing near the shore's edge helped pull Tran from the water, he recalled. Another bystander gave him a sweater — one he hopes to return.

Police Chief Teresa Ewins heralded Tran's efforts at a news conference Thursday morning, saying "his quick actions saved a life."

"These are things that our officers have done routinely through the years," she said "And they do it at the risk of their own lives."

"Our officers aren't gonna stop," the police chief added. "They don't think of themselves first. They think of who's in that car."

For Tran, Wednesday's incident marked his second water rescue in less than six months following a similar situation in September, when he and two bystanders saved a driver from drowning after his pickup left the roadway and crashed into a pond in southeast Lincoln.

In that instance, Tran said, the bystanders were "the true heroes," downplaying the role he played in the September rescue.

This time, the sergeant jumped in the water alone.

But he was still quick to share the credit, shrugging off the suggestion that he is a hero and thanking the bystanders who called 911, the dispatchers who kept him updated and the group of responders who met him at the pond's shore.

"Everybody played a part," he said.

But none played a role as important as Tran, who drove home for a change of clothes before heading back to the department's southeast station where, after pulling a woman from a sinking car in a freezing pond, Tran decided to finish his shift — for the same reason he had braved the water hours earlier.

"I just did what I thought was right," he said.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7223 or [email protected]. On Twitter @andrewwegley

___

Visit Lincoln Journal Star, Neb. at www.journalstar.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.