Highway patrol releases video of Sardine crash

WARNING: this footage is difficult to watch for some people. Viewers should use discretion.

BRIGHAM CITY — The Utah Highway Patrol has released the dashcam footage of a Sardine Canyon crash that injured a trooper.

Running just over six minutes long, the video shows Sgt. Cade Brenchley’s arrival as he responded to multiple slide-off accidents in the area. Soon after arriving on the scene, you see the trooper exit his patrol vehicle to approach a car that appears to be on the road’s shoulder, when a black sedan slides into him and sends his body flying into the air. He suffers the second impact when his body lands on the first car he was approaching.

Brenchley remembers getting out of his car to check on a vehicle involved in another crash.  He doesn’t remember being the impact.

“It felt like a dream, and I started wondering what was going on.  At that point, I woke up and I saw snow and I was laying there.  It had knocked the wind out of me and I was gasping for breath,” Brenchley says, adding, “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’ve been hit. I just got hit.  Holy crap!’”

Several people who witnessed the accident stopped to assist Benchley, including the woman who hit him.

Benchley says, “The driver of the car that hit me, she showed up and was obviously distraught.  I, kind of, had to try and console her. I felt bad for her, but, I know there was no intention, there.”

A bystander, possibly a driver or passenger from another accident, leans over the trooper to check on his condition and appears to call for help on a cell phone. Eventually, the video shows more people assisting the trooper on the ground, and even returning to the trooper’s vehicle to use Brenchley’s radio to report the injury to dispatchers.

“I need an ambulance, one of your officers has been hit by a car,” the bystander is heard saying into the radio. “Mile marker 215, Sardine Canyon.”

The response from dispatchers is swift and another trooper radios that he is on the way.

Shortly after that, you hear a trooper on the radio requesting that the canyon be closed to traffic.

Brenchley was wearing a reflective vest when he was struck, but the driver who hit him appeared to have lost control on the ice.

Brenchley’s daughter, Alexandra, says she and her mother had trouble believing the news about the crash.

“I was just crying, and I went up to my mom.  My mom was like, ‘Ok, listen.  You need to be strong,’” Alexandra Brenchley recalled.

When it was all over, Brenchley was left with four broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade and some road rash on one side of his face.  He believes he’s lucky his injuries weren’t far more severe.  He’s pleading with all drivers to “check their ego” and slow down in the snow.