Officer Sings To Toddler At The Scene Of A Car Crash That Killed Her Dad
After a horrific car crash in Colorado claimed the life of a little girl’s father, a witness caught a moment that will break your heart in two: an officer holding the little girl, distracting her from the crash site by singing to her.
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
Officer Nick Struck was called to the scene of a fatal single-vehicle crash on Thursday. A white SUV holding six passengers — two adults and four children — rolled over and all of its passengers were ejected. An adult male was pronounced dead at the scene, an adult female and one child were transported by air ambulance, and the three remaining children were taken to a local hospital.
When Struck arrived at the scene, he was handed one of the children that had been ejected from the car. When he realized it was her dad that had died in the crash, he began singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” to distract her from the scene. Witness Jessica Matrious captured the moment in photo that has now gone viral. A clearly emotional Struck told KUSA-TV. “The first thing we do when we get on scene is we just try to, if we can comfort anybody, of course we’re going to go to the kids. Who wouldn’t want to go to a kid?”
Struck explains, “I was handed a little girl…she was about two years old. My daughter, when she falls down and hurts herself, I sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.’ So I started singing to the little girl… What would I want that dad to do if it was my daughter?”
“I’m not a medical person, but I know how to give a hug to somebody, and you better believe every one of those officers on scene would do the same thing,” Struck said. The Brighton Police Department shared the picture on their Facebook page over the weekend with the message,”We are extremely proud of the men and women of our department! Good work, Officer Struck.”
It’s easy to forget how much tragedy and devastation first responders witness. This is a reminder that first responders touch so many people in ways we’ll never know; not every moment can be captured on camera.
Warning: you may not want to watch the following video at work, unless you feel comfortable bursting into tears around your co-workers.
This article was originally published on
