Lincoln County deputy stops wrong-way driver with his vehicle by crashing head-on
By: A Lincoln County Sheriff's deputy selflessly put himself between a wrong-way driver and a highway full of Labor Day travelers. It happened Sunday evening on I-70 near Arriba. That deputy says he was just doing his duty. But it's not the first time that duty has put him in harm's way.
Deputy Michael Hutton is either the luckiest or the unluckiest person on earth. Twice he's nearly died on the job, and twice he's survived.
"Somethings looking over my shoulder a couple of times now," says Hutton.
The latest brush with death happened Sunday when Hutton responded to a wrong-way driver on I-70.
"Running full lights and sirens to weave from shoulder to shoulder just desperately trying to get this person to see me and hopefully slow down," Hutton remembers.
When that didn't work, he made a decision.
"If I have to, I'll just crash into them right here," Hutton tells dispatch in body-camera footage of the incident.
Angling his vehicle, he hit the wrong-way driver head-on. That wrong driver was going 75 mph.
"Crash! Crash! Crash! Medical, I'm hit!" Hutton shouts in the body-camera video.
"It disoriented me, to say the least, I was a little loopy," says Hutton.
Hutton struggled to get out of his car, then staggered over to help the other driver, a 58-year-old woman.
"She was very disoriented and confused, so immediately it lead me to believe that there was a medical episode of some kind," says Hutton.