A Utah Highway Patrol Trooper suffered multiple injuries after being struck by a driver while checking on a vehicle that slid off a snowy roadside in Sardine Canyon.
Dash cam footage from the Sgt. Cade Brenchley’s vehicle shows the trooper on foot responding to several slide-offs due to the weather. As he approaches a car that slid off the highway, a car suddenly hits from behind him, launching him into the air.
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Several passersby stopped to help the trooper, including the driver who accidentally hit him on the icy road.
Brenchley suffered four broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade and a road rash to the face. Speaking to the media last week, the father of four and husband, said he was “extremely grateful to be alive” after watching the dash cam footage.
Among the first responders to the Utah trooper’s aid were three of his cousins and a few childhood friends.
Brenchley goes on to share that between the time of him stepping out of his vehicle to the accident itself “felt like a weird dream” as everything “was black.”
“It’s miraculous, though, that this is all I have, considering what we saw [on the video],” Brenchley said, sitting beside his wife and four children at Logan Regional Hospital, where he continues to recover.
According to USA Today, his wife Lindsay, has watched the video one time, admitting that even though he is okay, she doesn’t “like watching him fly through the air like that.”
Brenchley goes on to tell the media that the woman who hit him should not be “vilified,” adding she was in “hysterics” at the accident.
“I hold no ill will toward her,” he said. “And if anybody should be upset, it should be me or my family.”
According to the Utah Department of Public Safety, the trooper, Brenchley became the 11th state trooper to be hit by a car in 2018, one more than last year’s high of 10 troopers.
