(WSVN) - A video captured the moment when a Florida deputy was almost struck by a pair of wrong-way drivers.
The officer’s dashcam captured a white van and a Sedan tailgating one another as they beamed their headlights in the wrong direction of a road in Tampa, Sunday morning.
“Woah. Jesus Christ,” said the officer on the footage. “Those two guys are going the wrong way on a one-way street.”
Tampa Police Officer Scott Van Treese was behind the wheel of his marked cruiser as he transported a DUI suspect to jail when he witnessed the wrong-way drivers; he immediately called it in to dispatch.
“I just had two vehicles ask me to go the wrong way on the crosstown,” said Van Treese on the video. “They got on at 78th Street. They will be heading westbound in the eastbound lanes, what appears to be a white van, the other a small sedan. I couldn’t stop them, obviously.”
Van Treese spoke at the Tampa Police Department about the incident.
“I didn’t have time to think,” said the officer. “Literally, as soon as I saw the headlights, it was just a shock. I just pulled over immediately and let them go by. I guess saying ‘Jesus Christ’ was more of a shock value than anything.”
Van Treese said since he joined the police force, he’s had three separate incidents where he had to dodge wrong-way drivers.
He believed both drivers in Sunday’s incident may have been intoxicated.
“Impaired drivers have a tendency to tailgate each other,” said Van Treese. “It’s very common that when we find drunk drivers that they’re right on the back of another vehicle. My only assumption is, is that maybe that person in the white van was impaired and was tailgating the car in front of him and just one drunk following another drunk.”
Authorities are still looking for the two people who were driving those vehicles.
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