Cops rescue nurse who fell asleep at wheel and drove into lake

SUGAR LAND, Texas (FOX 26) - They are being called heroes. Three police officers who are caught on camera saving a woman from drowning are speaking about the rescue. 

It happened in Sugar Land on Meadowcroft at Westcott. The murky lake is known to be full of alligators and snakes, but that didn’t stop three Sugar Land police officers from jumping right in to help when a woman accidentally drove into the water.  She was left trapped and couldn’t get out of her sinking SUV on her own.         

"When I was approaching the lake, I could hear her screaming,” explains Sugar Land police officer Micah Wilks, who was the first officer to arrive. 

Police body cam video documents the dire situation as it unfolds. 

"She was banging on the window. So you know she was in desperate need of help,” says Wilks.

It was around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday.  A witness called 911 reporting a woman in an SUV had just driven into the lake.

"The water already came up to the seat cushions in the front of the vehicle, and the water was still coming in,” Wilks explains. The officer knew he didn’t have much time.

It’s next to impossible to open a car door in this situation so Officer Garrett Driscoll decided to break a window. 

"Luckily I have a little knife with a window break on the end of it. We go to the back window first. I hit it once, luckily it put a nice little hole in it,” says Officer Driscoll. But the woman was afraid to move around inside and begged officers to get her out through the front.

"As officer Driscoll was attempting to break the front window, I punched out the second window he had already broken,” adds Sugar Land Police Officer Michael Candler. 

The officers were doing all of this in deep water with heavy boots and bullet proof vests weighing them down.

"It made it harder to swim, but it did not hinder us from the rescue,” says Candler.

Seconds after the officers pulled the woman to safety, the SUV sank. 

"The car was under water in just a matter of 30 seconds,” explains Officer Wilks.        

It turns out the woman the officers saved from drowning is a night shift nurse who was on her way home from work, and at a “T" in the road she fell asleep at the wheel.  Fortunately, a witness was right there to call 911 and three heroes were just minutes away.