Douglas County Sheriff’s Office shared a video of the scary moment a police officer pulled a dog named Hank of out a burning vehicle and saved its life.
“I’m a dog parent,” he says in the video. “My only child is my dog, so I would’ve done the same thing whether it be baby human, dog, cat — a life is a life, and you kind of treat it as such.”
Deputy Michael Gregorek’s chest cam video footage showed him driving through a suburb in Castle Rock, Colorado, and pulling up onto the scene.
He said in an interview with the department that all the information Gregorek received before arriving on the scene was that it was a vehicle fire.
He said he had to be prepared in case there was criminal activity at the site and when he pulled onto the scene, he saw a man throwing something at the burning vehicle.
At first, he thought the man was throwing a Molotov cocktail bomb, like an incident that had recently happened in the area. However, when Gregorek got out of his vehicle, the owner of the car was yelling at him that his dog was inside.
“He starts screaming, ‘My dog’s in the car,'” Gregorek said. “It flipped [the] switch from ‘It’s obviously not a crime’ to ‘Now we have a life.'”
Gregorek quickly used his retractable baton to break open the vehicle’s back windows and they found the dog salivating and struggling for air.
Smoke was rolling out of the vehicle and the owner frantically tried to pull his dog out but he wasn’t able to get him. That’s when Gregorek stepped in and pulled him out of the vehicle and ran him over to the snowy grass.
“I knew he was really in a bad way, and so my thought only at that point was he’s coming out with me, regardless of whatever else might be happening — smoke or fire. Nothing else really mattered at that point other than getting Hank out of the car,” Gregorek said of the moment.
Fortunately, the dog didn’t have any serious injuries from the fire and smoke and Deputy Gregorek was alright too, other than some minor smoke inhalation.
“Wow, what a wonderful happy ending! Great job, Deputy! You brought tears to every dog lover’s eyes with this rescue!” a Facebook user commented on the video. “A true hero and especially Hank’s Hero!! As a fellow dog parent, so grateful for your quick actions!”