By Madeleine Marr
Miami Herald
HEARTLAND, Fla. — A Florida deputy in the Heartland region had a very dramatic commute to work Wednesday morning.
Lt. Michael Bellflower, with the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office, is being hailed as a hero after leaping into action and rescuing a truck driver in distress.
The law enforcement veteran explains in a Facebook video that he was stopped at a light near Highway 70 and Turner Road in Arcadia, about an hour east of Sarasota, when he spotted something that didn’t look right. A cattle truck heading east was jerking, and not accelerating normally when the light turned green.
“He was popping the clutch and hopping pretty bad,” Bellflower said. “That was uncharacteristic of a seasoned truck driver.”
Bellflower says he caught up with the slow-moving semi, jumped on the fender, busted open the window and turned off the ignition, all while careening through traffic, like a scene out of “The Fast and the Furious.”
https://www.facebook.com/desotocoflsheriff/videos/835118334611594/
Amid the chaos, the 18-wheeler veered across the median into the westbound lanes, coming to a stop in the driveway of a business. Rescue crews arrived to give aid. The driver, whose medical condition was not revealed, is said to now be OK. Bellflower suffered a few minor cuts.
Turns out, the two men knew each other.
“I just knew I had to help my friend. At that point, I wasn’t a cop anymore,” Bellflower told local news station NBC-2. “I can fix a couple cuts; I can’t fix losing him.”
When the driver became coherent, he didn’t know what had happened and wondered why there was so much shattered glass from the broken window on his seats.
“I said, ‘I was trying to save your life, bud,” said Bellflower. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
The big boss gave the deputy a shout-out at the end of the FB video.
“As you can see it was just not an ordinary morning for Lt. Bellflower,” said DeSoto Sheriff James Potter. “We are very proud of him and the action he took. Please congratulate him.”
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