SAN ANTONIO, Texas—The life-saving actions of an off-duty police officer were caught on camera Tuesday night after he rushed in to save a woman from a fiery crash.
Police said the woman’s car veered off the road off Bandera near Evers Road around 3 a.m., plowed through a guardrail, and rolled over, bursting into flames. Authorities have not determined what caused the accident, but from the damage left at the scene, it appeared to have been a life or death situation.
And, by watching the video of the officer saving her life, the woman had one guardian angel, and what we don’t see in the video, is that she actually had two more.
St. Mary’s University student Andrew Jazbani and a friend were heading back to campus when they saw a car flipped over off Bandera Road.
“My friend Eric told me that there is a woman trapped inside the car,” Jazbani remembered.
That’s when the two friends jumped into action.
“Eric opened the door and rolled down the windows so that she could get oxygen,” Jazbani said. “Immediately, we kept trying to do whatever we could to get her out.”
A few minutes later, St. Mary’s University Police Officer Kenneth Hamilton noticed the overturned car and stopped to help.
By then, the car was already engulfed in flames.
“I was using my baton to try to break the windshield, and that wasn’t working,” Hamilton said.
“One of the young men asked me if I wanted a rock. He brings back this piece of concrete and starts throwing it at the windshield,” he added. “He did that several times, enough for me to be able to start kicking it in.”
Jazbani caught the next moments on video.
“I realized she wasn’t stuck in the seat belt, so I reached through the top and cut her seat belt. She dropped and I pulled her out,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton pulled that woman from the burning car, saving her life.
“I just didn’t want her to burn in front of me. I just had to keep going,” said Hamilton.
Jazbani doesn’t think of himself as a hero.
“I wanted to capture the heroic moment of the UPD officer because he really did put his life at risk,” said Jazbani. “In our eyes, he was truly a hero, and we’re just happy to be his sidekicks.”
Hamilton said he usually works a different shift, and Jazbani said he and his friend were planning to get something to eat before heading back to campus.
Those slight change of plans brought the three men together to save a woman’s life.
“It was a miracle. The way we were there on time, and then he was there at the same time,” said Jazbani.