'Sweetest sound I could hear.' Heroic Fort Worth officers save baby after rollover crash

FORT WORTH, Texas - The Fort Worth Police Department is praising two of its officers who helped to lift a car and revive an unresponsive baby after a crash on Interstate 30 last week.

Officers Recall What Happened

What they're saying:

FWPD Chief Eddie Garcia, Sgt. R Nichols and Officer E. Bounds spoke to reporters on Tuesday and answered questions about what was going through their minds as they searched for the little girl, pulled her lifeless body from under the car, started CPR, and then finally heard her faint cries.

Sgt. Nichols said the situation initially seemed dire. There was a vehicle on top of a baby, and the baby was pinned. But he and Officer Bounds knew they had to do something.

"She looked… I thought she was dead. I thought dead, but we're not going to sit there and just do nothing. So we began to work, just praying on the inside that the Lord was going to just work the problem for us," Sgt. Nichols said. "You know, we all came together. Everybody was pitching in the hand. And, slowly but surely, she came to."

The veteran sergeant said the reality was that everyone who was at the scene stepped up and everyone went to work.

"Just the humanity in the situation of everybody knowing what needed to be done and just finding somewhere to fit in was, you know, really encouraging," Nichols said.

Officer Bounds said the body camera video is still hard for him to watch.

"We go through a lot of training, scenario-based training, but nothing can really prepare you mentally for seeing a baby in that condition. It was hard at the time, and it's hard today," he said. "Just hearing that first little cry was the sweetest sound I could hear."

Both of the officers have children of their own at home.

"You definitely go home and hug your babies a little tighter that night," Bounds said.

"You're just thankful for a positive outcome one way or the other," Nichols said.

Chief Garcia said one of the reasons his department is sharing the video is to remind people of the good that police officers do, not just in the city of Fort Worth but across the country. Too often their miraculous actions go unnoticed.

"There was no better example for me in protecting and serving than this video," he said. "At the end of the day, we are dads. We are moms. We are brothers. We are sisters. You know, people talk about how they were able to move that car. These guys used dad strength. And whether it's dad strength or mom strength whatever you've got, they treated that baby as if it was their own and that needed to be shared."

"A lot of bad things in this world right now and I just think that they need to remember that there's still a lot of good," Bounds added.

Dramatic Rescue

The backstory:

The crash happened this past Thursday morning on I-30 between Eastchase Parkway and Cooks Lane. A woman and her infant child were both ejected in a rollover accident.

Body camera video shows Fort Worth police officers and several Good Samaritans frantically searching for the baby girl. They eventually realized she was pinned under the overturned vehicle.

"Hey! Over here. We need to move the car. I think the baby’s under here," an officer shouts.

Sgt. Nichols and Officer Bounds got help from the witnesses to lift the car and grab the child. She was unresponsive at the time.

The video also shows the officers performing CPR on the infant. She was awake and crying by the time paramedics arrived to take her to the hospital.

Fort Worth police said both she and her mother are expected to make a full recovery.