Officer Carlos Henderson is recovering at home after a suspect fled with Henderson caught in the vehicle.
Henderson tells NBC 5 someone flagged him down at a nearby convenience store to alert him to a man passed out in a vehicle on the State Highway 121 service road at Spring Creek Parkway in The Colony early Tuesday morning.
When he went to check it out, he found a man slumped over the steering wheel of a truck partially in the intersection.
“I saw a guy passed out in the front seat with his head slumped over, so I wasn’t sure if he was sick,” Henderson said.
Henderson knocked on the window and, when the man didn’t respond, opened the door. He reached over and put the truck in park.
“I attempted to turn off the vehicle, but he started to wake up and attempted to grab my arm, so I pulled my arm out because I didn’t want to get my arm stuck in there,” Henderson said, “I asked the guy 'What’s wrong? What are you doing? Are you alright?' and he told me he was trying to get pizza.”
Henderson demanded several times the driver turn off the vehicle, which he eventually did.
“I told him we needed to wait for Frisco to get there because it was technically in their city limits,” Henderson said. “In the process, he started to try to put the car in drive. I told him to stop and he kept trying to put the car in drive, so I tried to pull him out of the vehicle or remove the keys, whichever one I could do first.”
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The driver, identified by police as 26-year-old Brian Osborne, was able to start the truck and fled with Henderson caught in the truck.
“I felt like I went from zero to one hundred as far as trying to run and keep up with the vehicle,” Henderson said. “It wasn’t until I actually tried to get up off the ground, to use both my arms to get up off the ground, that I realized that I had lots of pain in my right arm and I couldn’t move it.”
Henderson suffered a broken shoulder and may have to have surgery.
He says the hardest part of his recovery may be the time he has to take off from work.
“I love my job,” Henderson said. “I hate not being able to feel like I’m giving back. That’s been the hardest part, I feel like I’m not doing my part.”
“They always tell you it’s not something you chose to do, it’s something you’re called to do. I’ve had all sorts of different types of jobs, but this is the one job that I truly enjoy coming to work every day,” Henderson said.
Osborne was arrested and charged with aggravated assault of a public servant and evading arrest causing serious bodily injury. Police say they still don’t know why he fled or what exactly caused him to pass out in the vehicle. He has since posted bond and been released from the Denton County Jail.
