When Carrie Burton was on her way to do groceries in Brossard on Monday and saw an oncoming car veering down Auteuil Avenue with someone’s legs dangling from the opened driver’s side door, she immediately thought she had to stop it.
It was around 1:15 p.m. near the intersection of Grand Allée and she could see the opposite lane was free of cars or anything else to stop the driver. Initially, she thought it might be child dangling from the side of the car, but no matter who it was she knew the driver had to be stopped.
That’s when she drove her Jeep in front of him to block his path as he was approaching, before he started swerving to avoid her. She swerved her vehicle a second time, as he got closer, in order to block him again, which slowed him down.
“I was prepared to run into his vehicle. There was no way he was getting past me,” Burton said in an interview Monday evening.
The driver eventually released the person, she said, and finally swerved around her Jeep and took off, sending the person he was dragging for about “the length of a football field” rolling into the middle of the street.
It was a female police officer, covered in blood.
Burton, a former nurse, slammed on the brakes, put her Jeep in park, and rushed to the officer’s side to offer first aid before paramedics arrived.
She said the officer’s pants were ripped open at the knees, covered in blood. Her face and hands were also bloody.
“I was trying to calm her down, you know, making sure that she was OK, that she was aware of what was going on, that she was conscious, and nothing was broken,” Burton said.
“She thought she was going to die. And had [the driver] had enough acceleration to continue down that street, she probably would have been.”
Within five minutes, an ambulance arrived on scene to help the injured officer.
Driver arrested, officer sent to hospital
Longueuil police say the man’s vehicle was involved in a collision with another vehicle that turned into a “road rage” incident moments before the officer was struck. The officer attempted to speak with the driver about the two-car collision before he accelerated with the officer hanging from his car.
The male driver, in his 30s, was arrested near the scene for assault with a weapon after striking the officer with his vehicle. The injured officer was sent to hospital and police say they don’t fear for her life.
Police released few details about the events prior to the officer intervention. CTV News asked a police spokesperson how one of the vehicles involved in the collision ended up with a shattered windshield, but she did not have those details as the investigation is ongoing.
Burton estimates the driver was going between 50 and 65 km/h down the avenue and says her decision to slow him down by getting in his way likely saved the officer’s life.
“It was unreal to see somebody dragged like that,” she said. “It was just horrible to see. She didn’t deserve that.”
Still shaken from the events Monday evening, she told CTV News that she never expected to see “a wonderful police officer” being dragged down the street during a grocery run in her neighbourhood but was prepared to do whatever she could to help her.
“We all have to step up for each other,” Burton said. “That’s what Canada is about.”
