A sheriff's deputy in South Carolina is being hailed as a hero after a dramatic roadside rescue that was captured on police body camera video. The footage shows the moment the deputy raced to free a woman trapped inside a car that had crashed and caught fire, an ordeal the survivor now describes as feeling like a scene out of a movie.
The woman at the center of the rescue, Carlotta Bush, had been on a meaningful journey when her trip turned to disaster. She was driving from Georgia to Charlotte to celebrate finishing radiation treatment for breast cancer when her car lost control on a rainy stretch of highway, according to her account given to ABC affiliate WSOC.
What happened next was violent and disorienting. Bush said she remembered a sudden bam and then nothing else, blacking out after the impact. She told the station her car flipped nine times before coming to rest upside down and in flames, with her still strapped inside and unable to free herself from the wreckage.
Trapped and dazed, she struggled against her own seat. She recalled trying to unlatch her seat belt but being unable to get it open, until a voice broke through the chaos. Out of nowhere, she heard someone calling out to her, asking whether she was okay and whether she could hear him as he reached the crumpled car.
That voice belonged to Chester County Patrol Deputy Daniel Threat, who can be heard on the body camera footage reassuring her as he worked. Threat cut Bush free from her seat belt and pulled her clear of the burning vehicle, repeatedly telling her she was going to be all right as he guided her away from the flames to safety.
For Bush, the deputy's arrival felt like divine intervention. She said he had to be her guardian angel, and credited him directly with her survival, stating plainly that if it had not been for him, she would not have made it. The rescue spared her from what could easily have been a fatal outcome inside the overturned, burning car.
Bush has since returned home to Georgia, where she is recovering from a broken collarbone and continuing her cancer treatment. Despite everything she went through on that rainy highway, she said she feels lucky to be alive and grateful to the deputy she now owes her life to, a survivor of both her illness and a crash that left her car in flames.