Dallas police officers rescue woman from submerged vehicle: 'It was divine intervention'
FORT WORTH, Texas - Two Dallas police officers dove into the waters of Bachman Lake last week saving the life of a woman who was in a submerged vehicle.
The sergeants recalled the harrowing experience with FOX 4’s Shaun Rabb.
A waterfall of emotions for Dallas Police Sergeants Paul Kessenich and Matt Carlson.
On July 3 at 3 a.m., a woman in a car was sinking in Bachman Lake.
"We could actually hear some screaming, but it was muffled because she was underneath the water," Carlson said.
"When we heard the muffling, we knew," Kessenich said. "And I'm yelling to Matt. I said it's time to take our gear off."
"As he's formulating plans telling me exactly what we're gonna do, she just pops up and she starts flailing her arms, and we know she's not going to make it," Carlson said. "So I just looked at Paul and said, ‘I’m going in!’"
"We stripped our gear pretty quick. And when we dove in, we got her at the car," Kessenich recalled. "And we held her at the trunk that was still just hovering above the water line."
They started swimming her back while she was unconscious and not breathing.
Kessenich is both a patrol and dive team sergeant and had just gone through a CPR refresher course.
"Give her one breath and start compressions. And after compressions, she came back to life," he recalled.
The sergeants call it a providential moment. Both were at an incident just down the street when the car in the lake call was dispatched.
"I just happened to be in a parking lot right there off Shorecrest. So it was, not to be too religious, but a lot of God's saving hand for the fact that what are the chances for the sergeant of the dive team, Paul, being the guy who was like 60 seconds away from her," Carlson said.
"I put it on divine intervention because we just were there at the right time," Kessenich said. "And that lady needed help, and we were the right people to help her at the time."
The woman was taken to Parkland and is doing well in her recovery.