A guy who “appeared to be unconscious at the wheel” joined rush-hour traffic on a six-lane Florida highway, and the chaos that followed was caught on a deputy’s dash camera.
A statement from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office says it happened around 6 p.m. on Friday, April 14, on McMullen Booth Road in Safety Harbor, just west of Tampa.
A news statement said that Sheriff’s Deputy G. Pereira was on his way to work when he saw a southbound Honda Civic driving erratically right in front of him.
A Dashcam video posted on Facebook on April 18 shows that the swerving car sometimes went off the road and through the woods.
The driver then seemed to go too far in the opposite direction and drive in the unpaved middle, where he ran over traffic signs.
When the car went into traffic coming the other way, the deputy did something drastic: he drove his police car into the side of the Civic.
“The deputy used a pit maneuver to stop the car because he thought the driver might cause a serious crash,” officials said. “He didn’t want the driver to hurt or kill anyone, so he was afraid he might.”
Officials say that a body-worn camera shows that the driver was “almost unresponsive” and had to be taken out of the car and put on the ground.
The affidavit says that the 31-year-old driver was brought back to life by giving him three doses of a drug used to treat opioid overdoses. He was taken to a hospital to be checked out and later charged with driving under the influence, having fentanyl on him, and having marijuana on him, police said.
As of April 19, the 90-second video had been watched more than 18,000 times and received hundreds of replies and comments. Some people pointed out that the car was stopped near McMullen-Booth Elementary School.
“Deputy Pereira is a hero,” someone wrote in a reply.
“It’s crazy that no one got hurt,” someone else wrote.
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