Temple native Frank Hernandez was at the tail end of an overnight shift when his patrol car clipped a tractor-trailer rig that was hauling a mobile home.
On impact, an 8-foot section of a 2-by-6 beam ripped through Her nandez's patrol car window and impaled him below the shoulder before ripping through the patrol car's cage, backseat, and trunk.
'If it had passed all the way through me, I probably would have bled to death,' he said.
After careening off another car, Hernandez's cruiser barreled down a 120-foot embankment, striking a tree and spinning into some thick brush near a creek bed.
'When I hit the tree, the airbags went off,' he said. 'My first thought was that I hope I didn't hurt or kill anybody.'
At first Hernandez sat in his patrol car, the 8-foot beam still skewered through him, and waited to be rescued.
The accident happened around 6:25 a.m. By the time Hernandez was rescued nearly three hours later, the life flight helicopter that the rescue crew requested was unavailable because of the attacks in New York and Washington D.C.
Hernandez found out later why it took so long to find him. The driver of the mobile home rig, Moses Aguilar of Belton, initially said he thought he had hit a deer. The woman in the other car that Hernandez hit had a child in a car seat that she was concerned about. After checking on her child, the woman, according to Her nandez, assumed that she had been involved in a hit-and-run accident.
So there he sat, pinned in his car, concealed by brush, and unable to use his car radio to call for help because his car's battery was destroyed in the accident. Hernandez's hand-held radio had been clipped on his uniform near his left shoulder. It was smashed through his body, the cord hanging, along with the beam, out of his back.
'I did a lot of praying,' Hernandez said. 'I wondered if I was watching the sun rise for the last time.'
At some point Hernandez began trying to draw attention to himself by shooting his service revolver and shotgun into a nearby embankment. He tried to space out the shots and fired when cars passed, hoping and praying that somebody would hear.
He was concerned that nobody had responded after he fired off 40 bullets and two shotgun rounds.
'I think it was dove season,' he said. 'Nobody was paying any attention to (me shooting off bullets).'
At around 9 a.m. Hernandez noticed his breathing starting to get shallow and he started to drift off. He offered up one last prayer.
'If it's my time to go,' he prayed, 'I'll go now, but if you have any way to save me (God), please send an angel.'
As he finished his prayer, Hernandez said he heard a voice scream, 'I found something.'
Aguilar, the truck driver involved in the accident, had returned to the scene with two coworkers. They were searching the area and discovered Hernandez.
'He knew in his heart something was wrong,' Hernandez said. 'Something made him come back, and I'm glad he did. If he hadn't looked for me, I probably would not have made it.'
In a few minutes a rescue crew arrived and used the Jaws of Life to cut the doors off Hernandez's squad car. Still conscious, Hernandez remembers a friend of his inserting an IV into his arm.
There was also a problem with the fire department's power saw. Hernandez said a burly fireman grabbed a handsaw and began vigorously cutting the beam so Hernandez could be moved out of the car.
'When I got to the hospital,' Hernandez said, 'there was like 12 doctors standing at the door all wide-eyed.'
Hernandez's injuries included three broken ribs, two fractured vertebrae, and a shattered left shoulder blade.
He credits the steel plate in his bulletproof vest for diverting the beam away from his heart and lungs. He stopped counting the stitches he received at 100.
It was a week later that Hernandez learned about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Like everybody else in American he had seen the news video, but he had watched the footage while drifting in and out of consciousness under the influence of painkillers.
'I was just as shocked as everyone else was when I learned about it,' he said.
Hernandez went back to work that December, before all the splinters had worked their way out of his body. He said for months he would have an itch on his back and invariably when his wife would inspect the spot, she would find that a splinter had emerged.
As a result of the accident, Hernandez has earned new nicknames like 'splinter' and 'woody,' but he is usually happy to tell the story that taught him that splinters are easier to remove than beams.
