John Woods, 35, was trying to do a good thing, a bold thing, but it was costly.
"He has a punctured lung, he has two broken ribs, a broken collar bone, a broken C-7 vertebrae,” said Woods' wife Brandi Sunday morning outside John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth.
Woods tried to get a drunken driver, who had been going northbound on the southbound side of state Highway 360 in Grand Prairie Friday night, off the road. They ended up side by side at a stop light at 360 and Ragland.
"Completely passed out,” Brandi Woods said of the other driver. “Hands no longer on the wheel and my husband says, 'Our kids are in the car behind us, I'm not going to have this.’ He jumps out of the vehicle. Goes to the driver’s side. Reaches in to try to take the keys out and the gentleman comes to and floors it."
"My husband instinctively knew he needed to hang on because it would have either been be run over right there or he put his legs on the running bars and he is half body in the truck and takes over the steering wheel."
Woods, owner of Woods General Contracting, either jumped off or fell off and the guy in the grey crew cab took off. Witnesses and family members got out of their cars and started looking for Woods in the waist-high grass.
"My worst fear was to find him and my best thought was to find him because I didn't know what I was going to find," said Brandi Woods.
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Woods was banged up, but doctors said all of his injuries will heal. On Sunday afternoon, Woods was discharged and went home. Brandi appreciates what her husband tried to do, but with four young daughters said this can't happen again.
"I'm going to put him in the back seat with the child locks on (laughs)," said Brandi Woods. "I feel that what he did was heroic and he wasn't doing it for a badge, a medal or an honor or to be put on a pedestal. He was doing it for the lives of the people behind us, for our kids, for ourselves. Maybe even for the gentleman driving."
Brandi Woods said she hopes that gentleman has a conscience and turns himself in.
