Local woman rescued from flooding car

By JOEL PHELPS | arkadelphian.com

It’s a common scene in action movies. A vehicle takes a dive into a body of water. The driver, trapped inside, bangs helplessly at the window as water pours inside. The driver notices a way out, takes a deep breath, and begins the escape.

On Tuesday, this terrifying scene became reality for a local woman.

Midway resident Donna Sharp was driving home from Arkadelphia on the afternoon of Feb. 27 when she suddenly lost consciousness and control of her vehicle. The SUV left U.S. Highway 67 and wound up in DeRoche Creek, the body of water separating Clark and Hot Spring counties.

The chaos of the car flipping likely awoke her. “It happened so fast,” a bruised Sharp said the day after the accident. “It felt like I was being thrown around in the air.”

The vehicle came to a rest about 12 feet from the opposite bank of the creek. Sharp, 76, knew immediately that her life was in danger. She unbuckled her seatbelt.

“The doors were smashed in, the airbags were deployed, and water was coming in,” she said. Sharp reached for an umbrella in the passenger seat and started jabbing at the windows. The glass, however, was unforgiving. The umbrella broke. Water still gushed in from unseen crevices.

While the temperature outside was in the mid-70s, the water wasn’t nearly as pleasant. “It was cold!” Sharp said. She looked back to see the rear window had been broken out from the wreckage — could it be an escape? Water was pouring in there, too, she noticed.

Sharp recounts that she kept her cool during the ordeal. “I think I was fairly calm. I just knew I wanted to get out of that car,” she said with a chuckle that was cut short from aching ribs.

In the flooding car, Sharp grabbed her purse and climbed toward the back of the SUV, then peered out the rear window, hoping help would come soon. While she’s not sure who called 911, she saw someone walking along the bridge and talking on a phone. Sharp guessed about 15 minutes had passed by the time help arrived. 

The Hot Spring County Sheriff’s Office summoned first responders to the scene and relayed the message to dispatchers in Clark County.

The first officer to arrive on scene was Eric Fain, a school resource officer at the nearby Ouachita School District. Fain said he communicated with the occupant from the bank and determined that she had no life-threatening injuries. Meanwhile, Caddo Valley Police Chief Ashley Collier was en route from Channel Road — some 6 miles away on the opposite side of town.

Once at the scene, Collier made her way down the creek bank and shucked her vest and boots. Along with local volunteer fireman Brock Davis and another fireman, the trio waded into the chest-deep water to pull Sharp from the vehicle. Other first responders on the bank linked arms, forming a human chain to pull Sharp to safety.

Body camera footage obtained from the Caddo Valley Police Department shows Collier’s perspective. The video below was edited by arkadelphian.com to shorten the clip.

Collier echoed what Sharp said about the water temperature: “It shocked me for about half a second,” she said. Collier and Fain both agreed the rescue took all of about 2 minutes.

Sharp was transported by ambulance to Baptist Health Medical Center in Arkadelphia, where she underwent an evaluation and was released. She said the hospital visit was brief enough that, on the way back home, she passed by the creek to see a wrecker service was still in the process of removing the vehicle from the scene.

Sharp thanked the first responders who rescued her, and gave thanks to a higher force. “For me to have come out with just bruises when it could have been much worse, the good Lord was with me,” she said.