A Dallas police officer who nearly died after being crushed by a suspect's vehicle in 2015 is opening up about his brush with death.
Sr. Cpl. Ed Lujan was working an off-duty security job at Club Kalua in Northwest Dallas on Nov. 9, 2015 when he and other officers were escorting four men who had been kicked out, according to WFAA-TV.
That's when Eduardo Gonzalez-Rios got into his SUV and ran over Lujan. Officials said that the suspect then put the SUV in reverse and ran over the officer again and then shifted into drive and ran over him a third time.
"The initial hit slammed my head against the windshield peeling my scalp all the way back from my right side," Lujan told the news station. "I could hear people yelling and screaming. I could hear ambulances and I knew they were coming for me."
Lujan sustained severe injuries including a traumatic head wound, a lacerated tongue, broken neck and back, broken ribs, broken sternum, shattered hips, ankles and legs.
The officer recalled laying on the pavement and the moment that he knew he was dying.
"I felt the euphoria of my life and soul leaving my body," he said. "So it wasn't a feeling of sadness or joy. It was more like tranquility. So I knew what was going on. I'm dying."
The next thing he remembers is waking up in the ambulance hearing paramedics talk about his condition.
"And I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to die in an ambulance. It's like I am dying and there is nothing I can do,'" he said.
As he was wheeled into Parkland Hospital he asked for a priest, who he asked to forgive the man who ran over him before he died.
Lujan said that the experience changed his life and now he's on a mission to share his story with others.
"It's made me a better person, a better human being because I know how short life can be," he said. "I don't remember feeling any pain and I tell people all the time if God is that good then he is not going to let you feel any suffering at that moment of death."
Doctors told Lujan that he would never work as a police officer, but against all odds, he's back on the job.
