By Ashley Silver
Police1
TAMPA, Fla. — Prior to trooper Toni Schuck accepting her “Back the Blue” award at the 4th annual Fox Nation Patriot Awards, a video reel recounted the details of her harrowing tale of heroism. Earlier this year, Schuck used her patrol car to crash head-on into a drunk driver’s vehicle, which nearly struck several runners in a nearby road race.
During the awards ceremony, Schuck recalls the incident, explaining that she received a call about a driver going over 100 mph while she was working police detail at the annual Skyway 10K marathon in Florida. “We had heard the radio transmission from the first post that a car had broken through the detour,” Schuck told FOX News.
As the driver blew through more checkpoints, getting closer to runners, panic set in.
“Toni was that last line of defense,” Sgt. Artez Lester said on video played at the awards ceremony.
“In my mindset, I’m thinking, OK, I’m going to block this lane and she’s just going to stop. In that last second or two, I realized she wasn’t stopping,” Schuck said.
In a split-second decision, Schuck drove her cruiser head-on into the driver’s vehicle – preventing the driver from striking nearby runners.
“It was a hard hit and I wasn’t expecting it,” she told FOX News.
Schuck suffered injuries from the crash, but has since recovered and is back on duty.
As she accepted her “Back the Blue” award, she left the audience with this: “From the time she broke through, until the crash happened, was two minutes. And that’s what law enforcement gets – we get those split-second decisions and then the audience that gets to review our videos has a lifetime. What they don’t see is that we’re human and we want to do a job. And the job is to protect our community. And that’s what I felt I did that day.”