MARTIN COUNTY, Fla. -- A Martin County Deputy is being praised for helping a woman whose pickup truck wouldn’t stop.
Thursday afternoon, 70-year-old Dianne Cohoon called 911 frantically looking for help. She told dispatchers her ’89 Pickup truck wouldn’t slow down. “I cannot stop the truck. I cannot get it below 45 MPH. I have 1/8 of a tank left, I’ve been trying to run it out,” Cohoon is heard saying on a 911 dispatch recording.
Cohoon was driving along the Beeline highway toward Indiantown. There was little traffic, but deputies feared she would run into construction and traffic as she approached Indiantown.
“I’ve got to make it through Indiantown without killing anybody and I’m scared,” Cohoon said.
Cocoon says she tried taking the keys out of the ignition, pumping the brakes, throwing the truck into park and neutral, but nothing worked.
Deputies acted quickly, and waited for her to approach an upcoming bridge. They surrounded her truck.
“Other units were trying to get traffic ahead of her out of the way. They were trying to shut off lanes. She was coming in to an area where we couldn’t have done anything with all of the traffic and she was destined to have an accident,” said Martin County Sheriff William Snyder.
Snyder says her truck was smoking.
A deputy behind her, Deputy Steve Beatty, made the decision to pull a PIT maneuver, tapping the back of the truck to cause it to spin, and stop.
“He had to make a decision, really a life or death situation,” Snyder said.
Skid marks cover the road where Cohoon slid off the road. Neither she or the deputy were injured.
“It may have very well save her life or someone else’s life,” Snyder said.
Additionally, Snyder praises Deputy Beatty for preventing any other drivers from being in a crash.
“It’s not in anyway an over statement to say there’s a good possibility he saved her life, somebody else’s life or at least serious bodily injury,” Snyder said.