‘It’s not something you forget,’ says man who saw truck slam into Dayton police recruit

DAYTON — A Dayton police recruit seriously injured in Thursday afternoon’s crash involving a pickup truck and police vehicle on state Route 4 reportedly is in serious condition and breathing on his own Thursday night at Miami Valley Hospital, but that wasn’t the case at the scene, according to an eyewitness.

>> RELATED: Police recruit seriously injured in crash on SR-4; 5 others injured including supervisor, 2 recruits

“I heard like a screeching noise. Like brakes and stuff. And I seen the officer, like get hit by a car. It was pretty bad,” the eyewitness, Larry Mohawk, told News Center 7′s Kayla McDermott.

Mohawk said he was at his workplace, located next to state Route 4, when he found himself jumping a fence and rushing onto the highway.

“And you could tell he had head injuries, serious head injuries,” Mohawk said. “He wasn’t breathing.”

Medics took that recruit, two other recruits and a sergeant, and two other people who were in a pickup truck to Miami Valley Hospital from the accident scene. The truck, property of Reichard Buick GMC, slammed into a Dayton police vehicle that was parked on the shoulder of the highway as part of a traffic enforcement training exercise.

None of the six people injured has been identified by name.

>> PHOTOS: Crash scene where Dayton police recruit was struck by a vehicle on state Route 4

One of the recruits who was in the police vehicle is still in the hospital, according to the department; The sergeant and the third recruit have been released.

There has been no word on the condition of the people in the pickup truck.

“It’s probably gonna stick with me the rest of my life like this,” Mohawk said. “This is something you forget, know what I mean? It’s not something you forget.”

The recruit who suffered the worst injuries was outside the police vehicle. The other members of the department were inside it. The training exercise was being done in the final weeks before the recruits are to graduate from the police academy, Chief Kamran Afzal said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

He said he thinks speed is definitely a factor in the accident.

“But I really don’t know if it actually is going to be. Just the damage is pretty severe on both vehicles,” he said.

Traffic enforcement is a dangerous kind of work, the chief said.

“You never know what can happen. So that’s that’s just a life, unfortunately, for a lot of law enforcement officers,” Afzal said.

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