FHP trooper shares heroic story of stopping drunk driver head-on

A new video released by Florida Highway Patrol shows a trooper inside her patrol car as she is hit head-on by an impaired driver. She swung her cruiser around and braced for the woman to plow into her.

Florida Highway Patrol’s motto is Courtesy, Service, Protection. FHP Trooper Toni Schuck stuck to that on Sunday when she risked her life to stop a suspected drunk driver from speeding into a 10k race in Manatee County.

“I’ve never been in this position where I’ve had to put myself for somebody else,” said Schuck.

Trooper Schuck did just that to protect thousands of runners in a 10k race on the Skyway Bridge in Tampa on Sunday morning. She was positioned about half a mile from the starting point.

“We had got a notification on the radio at the first barricade that a car had come through,” said Schuck.

Behind the wheel of that car was Kristen Watts. Troopers say she was drunk and doing more than 65 miles per hour, driving past troopers and headed straight towards the bridge.

“I knew there were people there. I didn’t know where they were,” Schuck said.

The only one standing between Watts and these runners? Trooper Schuck. Dash camera video released by FHP shows the car coming straight towards the trooper. She saw it too and thought, “She would see the truck and she would stop,” said Schuck.

That wasn’t the case. The car hit her nearly head-on. “I’m thankful it was me, I’m thankful she didn’t get past me,” Schuck said.

The runners in the 10k are thankful too. “The only thing that was between me and that person was you. Heroic in every aspect of the word,” said James Judge, a runner & spokesman for Skyway 10k.

Trooper Schuck said in her interview that she got into this career because you think you’re going to save the world, you’re going to make all things right. On Sunday, she did that.