Flatonia officer recovering after runaway driver broadsides his patrol car early Sunday

Flatonia Police Sgt. Trey Tunis nearly lost his life when someone running from Department of Public Safety troopers on Interstate 10 slammed into the side of his patrol vehicle in the wee hours of Sunday, Sept. 11.

Flatonia Police Chief Lee Dick sent out a media release via social media in which detailed how the DPS trooper tried to pull someone over on I-10. Rather than pull over to the shoulder, however, the suspect driver gunned the engine of his older model Dodge one-ton and the chase was on.

Hearing the radio traffic on the ensuing high-speed chase, headed straight for Flatonia, Sgt. Tunis went to assist in the traffic stop. Dick said he intended to set out a spike strip on the westbound onramp at Highway 95 to see if they could disable the runner’s ride.

“He heard the pursuit exit into Flatonia and went to assist the trooper,” Dick told local press. “But just after he picked up the spikes and started driving, the suspect T-boned his patrol car at SH 95 and the westbound frontage road.”

The impact was so severe, it knocked Sgt. Tunis unconscious and left him badly hurt, the police chief reported. He was rushed by air ambulance to Dell Seton in Austin, where a skilled medical team awaited his arrival.

“When I spoke with the trooper, he said he thought it was a fatality as he ran up to (Sgt. Tunis’) truck,” Dick told the Fayette County Record.

The chief further added that had the fleeing driver made impact with the driver’s side of Sgt. Tunis’s vehicle rather than the passenger’s side, “it almost certainly would have been (a fatality accident),” Dick said.

The collision occurred at about 2 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 11. Miraculously, Officer Tunis was able to return home before the day ended, Chief Dick told the Record reporter.  

Dick said the suspect was also seriously injured in the crash as well. He was also flown to another Austin hospital, where he remained under constant guard as doctors patched him up.

That man now faces a multitude of felony criminal charges, possibly even attempted capital murder charges if it can be proven he intentionally crashed into Sgt. Tunis while he was committing another felony (running from the DPS).

Capital cases usually end in one of two sentences, life behind bars or death in Huntsville.

Dick told the newspaper he immediately joined his officer at the hospital on Sunday. He had not yet reviewed any of the footage from Sgt. Tunis’ body cam footage—nor had he seen any of the dash cam views that likely exist from Sunday’s collision—as of the time this story was filed.

DPS did a full workup of the Sunday cash scene and will likely be the lead law enforcement agency involved when it comes to building the cases for prosecutors.