Even now, it’s hard to watch.
The body-worn camera footage plays like a blur — a car flipped in the grass, voices shouting, officers running toward the wreck. Somewhere under the overturned vehicle, a baby.
“It’s kind of a surreal moment,” Officer Edwin Bounds said. “I remember thinking, oh man, this is gonna be a wreck. The wheels caught the grass, and then when it started rolling, that's when I was like, oh, wow, this is… this is bad.”
FWPD rescue child trapped beneath car
FWPD rescue child trapped beneath car
It was just after 9:30 in the morning on October 23. Officer Bounds was driving eastbound on I-30 through Fort Worth when he saw a car in front of him veer in traffic. “I saw [the driver] starting to change lanes,” he said. “My initial thought was there's a car behind her, she's gonna hit them. I guess he was in her blind spot and never saw him, because when she changed lanes, she just barely clipped the front of that other truck.”
The SUV spun, rolled, and came to rest upside down.
Bounds said, “I'm jumping out of my car, I'm trying to put my gear on and mark myself up as a police officer. At the same time, I'm trying to switch radio channels and trying to call out so that we can get some units out there and get medics on the scene.”
Sgt. Ryan Nichols was close behind. “I heard him call out on our radio channel, which is not the main air,” Nichols said. “I saw traffic changing lanes, it was obvious something was going on. Then he said there was a wreck.”
Sgt. Nichols pulled over and reached the crash first. He remembered how the focus shifted once they heard the words no one wanted to hear. “You're trying to get your bearings, start to prioritize what needs to be done, and then once the information starts coming out that there was possibly a baby or somebody else involved, that's when things kind of shifted.”
Bounds said it plainly: “You don't really care about the car at that point, because that's just an object. The first thing you do is just start looking for people. Who was in this car? Who was driving it? Are there passengers? How many people were in the car? And checking to see if they're hurt.”
A mother had been thrown from the vehicle. A bystander was already helping her. Then came the question — is there a baby?
Nichols heard it in the crowd. They started searching. Then Nichols saw something he’ll never forget.
“When we're searching, kind of going around the car, there's a lot of debris and the rear windshield is busted out, and I can move whatever's in there. The vehicle had a sunroof, and I mean, it's the worst thing you can imagine. Her little legs were sticking through the sunroof, and that's when I saw her and realized there's somebody under the car.”
He called out for help. Bounds didn’t hesitate.
“It was a request that, under any normal circumstances, would sound very unreasonable,” Bounds said. “When I walked up and he looked at me and he said, we need to move this car. On a normal day, if you tell somebody, we need to move this car, that just sounds crazy, but at the time it was like, okay, let's move it.”
He waved people over. “I was able to get a couple people on the passenger side of the car. Thankfully, there were other people there. I'm glad people stopped. Without all those people on that car, there's no way it would have happened.”
Nichols dropped to the ground and with the car lifted, pulled the baby out from under the vehicle.
She was unresponsive and Sgt. Nichols began CPR.
“It’s tunnel vision. You're just trying to work, pray on the inside, but also recognize what's going on. You can be as confident as you want until life hits, and you're actually doing [CPR] praying that it works. When she started to breathe, it was…”
He paused.
“I said it before, everybody on that scene took a breath when she took a breath, and it was just the biggest sigh of relief. She was alive. The Lord showed us, what you're doing is working, keep going. It was like your own baby, the doctor pulling your own baby out and just waiting for that first sign of life.”
EMS arrived and the injured were taken to a local hospital. Friday morning, Officer Bounds visited the family, learning mom and baby would make a full recovery.
Fort Worth police chief Eddie Garcia said the officers’ response spoke volumes, both as professionals and as people. “I don't know if there's a better example of protecting and serving than what those two individuals did, how they brought that baby back. They saved a life. They treated that baby as if it was their own. I don't think those individuals thought of themselves as police officers, they thought of themselves as fathers. What they often say is some incidents build character and others reveal them. This didn't build character, this revealed their character.
Bounds said, “I just hoped that if it was my daughter in that situation, I just like to think most people would have done the same thing I did. I don't feel like I did anything extraordinary that a normal, good person wouldn't do.”
Two officers and a crowd of Good Samaritans — brought together by chance, some moved by faith, driven by instinct. Family, timing, and a will to help aligned in a way that saved a life.
Nichols said. “If we hadn’t been there, if citizens hadn’t been there, if she wasn’t found when she was, if it was just a 911 call, had to wait for patrol to respond, all that traffic, fire department get there, and then they still have to find her- I personally don’t think there’s much of a chance that she survives that.”
Bounds said, “For whatever reason, it seemed like so many stars aligned at the exact moment. The fact that I was just 20 yards away and could call out as quickly as I could. The fact that random people stop, the fact that the car just happened to have a sunroof. If the car hadn't had a sunroof, he would have never seen her. So many things had to line up perfectly for this end well, and I'm just grateful that it did.”
Weeks later the emotions are still there. So, is the weight of what almost happened that morning.
That first little cry, Bounds said, “was the sweetest sound I could hear.”
It was the sound of a life saved.