'Just crash into them': Lincoln County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Hutton stops wrong-way driver on I-70
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.
As he waited for medical help, Hutton phoned his wife Heather, who is 7 months pregnant with their second child.
"You obviously think about the baby and having to go through that all without a father," says Heather.
The crash, however, isn't the worst news she's received.
"I was thankful he was able to call me this time," Heather says, "it did trigger those feelings that I had when he first was shot."
In May of last year, Hutton responded to a semi-truck break-in, and was shot 3 times.
"I was making peace with death to be perfectly honest with you in those moments," says Hutton.
After months of physical therapy, he made a full recovery, just in time to wind up back in the hospital after this week's crash. But his luck hadn't run out yet.
"We went to the local hospital and wouldn't you know it we're in the same beds next to each other," Hutton says of himself and the other driver. Miraculously, both survived the crash with only minor injuries.
"She looked good and she said that she was doing okay and I told her this was the best possible outcome that both of us walked away tonight," says Hutton.
Hutton's wife Heather says she's had moments where she wished her husband chose a different career path, but she'd never ask him to stop doing something he's so passionate about that helps so many people.
"He's just the ideal law enforcement officer," she says, "I hope that younger generations and current law enforcement will see how he operates and take some of that with them, and understand that community is so important when it comes to this line of work."
