Recuperated Hawk Set Free By Carrollton Officer Who Saved it

An officer is saying goodbye to his feathered friend after he rescued it earlier this month.

Officer David Tatum with the Carrollton Police Department was out patrolling early in the morning when he noticed a hawk in the middle of the road while traveling eastbound on Keller Springs.

“A car was coming in that lane from the opposite direction and I noticed that it swerved to miss the hawk. So I could tell that it probably was injured,” Officer Tatum recalled.

Officer Tatum then turned his cruiser around to render aid to the bird.

“I called for animal control to see if they could get out. They had quite a long response time so I went ahead and decided to scoop up the bird with what I had and secured him in my squad car.”

“The opportunity to save a beautiful bird like the Cooper’s hawk was really neat,” Officer Tatum said.

Now that the bird has been rehabilitated, Officer Tatum gets to be front and center to release the hawk back into the wild.