Watching police officers in action, the real-life heroes, is truly incredible at times. Sometimes only during sudden life shattering events, true acts of kindness and unconditional love are witnessed. Just something like this heroic story.
Nick Struck, a hero cop from Brighton, Colorado, held a little girl, on June 18, 2015, and distracted her after her father died in a SUV crash. Struck was the third officer at the unfortunate scene that year, and was soon handed a toddler to calm her down while other emergency responders were busy assisting rest of her family in the vehicle.
The little girl’s father did not survive the crash and her mother and another sibling were airlifted to the emergency room. Ambulances took the child and two of her three siblings to the hospital.
Beyond the call of duty: Officer Nick Struck holds one of the girls who was in the crash and talks to her as his colleagues work to extract the rest of her family members stuck in the car in the background.
In a horrifying and a tragic life changing moment, as a witnesses explained, the car was driving down Colorado’s Interstate 76 in Brighton on June 18, 2015 on Thursday morning, when it flipped and rolled several times before coming to rest in a crushed heap.
The tragedy is nobody in the car was wearing a seat-belt. The father was killed instantaneously at the wheel, while the rest of those in the car had to be hospitalized.
While confirming nobody in the car was wearing the seat-belt officer Struck told 9News: “When you hear that there’s children involved, I’ll tell you what, everyone that responds to that scene, you get that pit in your stomach.”
“The first thing we do when we get on scene is we just try to, if we can comfort anybody, of course we’re going to go to the kids,” he said.
Being a father of two-year-old daughter himself, his natural instincts took over when he saw the toddler in distress, “So then the role we play is, to keep them safe, and he would be thinking, ‘what would I want that dad to do if it was my daughter in that position.”
Struck knew exactly what to do to keep the little girl calm – he started singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’.
“When you hear that there’s children involved, I’ll tell you what, everyone that responds to that scene, you get that pit in your stomach,” Struck said.
He also remembered, “I know for my daughter, it’s just the fact that someone is there giving attention, listening. It’s also the same with adults, but kids, they take it to a whole other level. So in this kind of traumatic events the simple act of paying attention and making them feel cared for becomes extremely important.”
“They’ll gravitate towards you, and I remember when I was holding her, she was grabbing the back of my arm, which is something that my daughter does. Just stroking to the music, ‘twinkle, twinkle.”‘
While this human drama was unfolding as he was holding the little girl and keeping her occupied and away from the heartbreak of her family’s crashed car, a passerby Jessica Matrious happened took a picture and post it to the social network, which went viral.
Matrious told NBC News, she was driving along the Interstate 76 when she saw the SUV flip and roll into the grass.
“They took an extreme sharp right turn and just immediately started to roll,” she said.
“I pulled over, obviously, and started running to the field to see what I could do. It’s so horrible to see something like that happen, especially because it could have been prevented.’If the father was wearing a seat-belt, then he’d still be here.”
This officer’s loving care and fatherly support did provide the much needed support to the little girl when she needed it the most.
“I’m not a medical person, but I know how to give a hug to somebody, and you better believe every one of those officers on scene would do the same thing,” Struck said.
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