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When Officer Brian Larison of the Chandler Police Department drove to work on Tuesday, he didn’t take his usual route. Instead of taking Loop 202 from east Mesa to Chandler, he hopped on U.S. 60.
Larison’s decision ended up saving a woman’s life.
“Right place, right time,” he later told news reporters, noting that fate “absolutely” played a role in his split-second decision to take a different route to work.
Around 7 a.m. Tuesday, a pickup truck became engulfed in flames after being rear-ended by a concrete mixer in the left lane, which caused a seven-car crash on U.S. 60 between the exits for Greenfield and Val Vista roads.
Larison, a former Marine and 20-year police officer, said all he could see were red tail lights and a concrete mixer veering in and out of traffic. He watched the rear lights of the truck turn clockwise as it fell on its side, and then, he saw the flames.
On his motorcycle, Larison rushed over to the Nissan pickup truck and used his baton to break the window. He struck the glass once, twice, and after the fifth hit, the glass finally shattered. As a motorcycle officer, he said he didn’t have the normal equipment that an officer in a car would have, like a glass breaker.
Asa Paguia, a firefighter and paramedic with the Peoria Fire-Medical Department who was off-duty at the time, ran up behind Larison in full fire gear toward the truck.
“For some reason, I looked out of the corner of my eye, and there’s this off-duty fireman,” Larison, who did not have any fire-resistant gear, said. “I’m like, ‘Dude, go get her, go get her out.'”
The pair pulled the driver out through the window and away from the burning vehicle as the fire crept from the truck bed to the front cabin.
“She clung to me on the side of the road, and I just held her,” Larison said, his voice cracking and his eyes brimming with tears. “I just told her I had her.”
The woman was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to DPS spokesperson Bart Graves. It was unknown if she had been released as of Wednesday afternoon. Larison said he inhaled a bit of smoke but was otherwise unharmed.
Larison said he would do it all again, any day of the week.
“Contract says payable with my life, if necessary,” he said. “That’s what we do.”
When asked if the driver of the concrete mixer was cited, Graves said the investigation was ongoing.
