Toni Schuck is not just a trooper.
She’s a hero.
Thanks to her selfless act a couple of days ago, she saved the lives of dozens of marathon runners during the annual 10-kilometer race across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.
The 26-year Highway Patrol veteran and mother of two knew she was the last car covering the runners and protecting them from any potential threat.
So, when she saw a car approaching at full speed, she knew she had to act quickly.
The last line of defense
“I was the last officer, I knew it was me,” Schuck said at a news conference Thursday. “If it wasn’t me to get her to stop, then who?”
The trooper used her patrol SUV to block the BMW that was dangerously approaching, but things didn’t go exactly as she expected them to.
Schuck’s initial idea was to use the car to block the other driver’s way, and she was sure the car would stop once the driver saw her.
But it didn’t.
Instead, the 52-year-old driver of the BMW, who is believed to have been drunk during the incident, kept going without reducing her car’s speed.
No time to think twice
Her maneuvers brought her right in front of the other car and the crash was inevitable.
“I thought if she got past, she would see that truck and she would stop. If she saw me veer to the left, I thought she would stop,” Schuck said. “In my mind, she’s gonna stop. The next thing was the crash.”
It all happened so quickly that the trooper doesn’t even remember if she braced for impact.
“I don’t really think I braced for impact. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, but it all happened so quick. It was a hard impact.”
Although the cars were unrecognizable after the crash, both drivers were taken out of them alive, suffering minor injuries.
Schuck suffered a concussion and a head wound, but otherwise, she was fine.
The other driver wasn’t badly injured.
When the Florida trooper tried to stop the erratic driver, she knew that she was doing the right thing.
But just what the actual impact of her action was, she didn’t realize until later on, when she was taken for treatment in an ambulance.
“It really overwhelmed me. I’m thankful it was me. I’m thankful she didn’t get past me,” she said.
It was only then that she realized that, if she had allowed the other car to drive past her, numerous people would have been injured.
Many lives could have been lost.
Schuck herself was lucky that she got out of the destroyed car alive. As she says, she believes that her guardian angel saved her life.
“I believe I had an angel riding shotgun with me, because I was trying to protect somebody else,” she told Inside Edition.
The other driver appeared in court, and she is facing charges of driving under the influence, among others.
Watch the hero trooper recall the incident in the video below!
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