ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. John Floyd has spent 14 years on patrol, the kind of career built on routine traffic stops, quick decisions, and crashes that happen so often on I-95 that he calls them a daily reality.
But on March 1, the call that came in — a multi-vehicle crash with a vehicle on fire — became the moment Floyd’s own body camera would later show in stark detail: deputies plunging into brush along the highway, pulling a driver away from a car engulfed in flames.
In the video, Floyd can be heard asking, “Where is he at?” as the team searches for the driver who, deputies were told, had been ejected.
Seconds later, as deputies push through the brush, he yells, “Move, move!”
Then, as he reaches the man, the urgency intensifies: “I’m dragging him. We’re dragging him,” followed by, “Just keep pulling,” and “Keep pulling him.”
“My fear was that it was going to catch the brush around us on fire,” Floyd told News4JAX. “I was just trying to pull him as hard as I could to get him out of that wood line.”
Near the end of the clip, he says, “We got the driver. He is conscious and breathing.”
Floyd said he was drawn to law enforcement as a teenager.
He graduated from the University of North Florida, attended the police academy and was hired by the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office. He spent eight years as a K-9 handler and has remained assigned to patrol.
“I wanted to do something where every day changed and really help the community,” he said.
The stretch of interstate where the March 1 crash happened is familiar territory, he said, and so are the calls.
But a vehicle fully engulfed in flames, he said, brings a different urgency — and a different level of danger.
“When I grabbed him, I could feel the flames,” Floyd said. “It was intense... I was also breathing in a lot of smoke, so I was gassed pretty quick.”
When deputies located the driver, Floyd said, the man was down in the brush near the burning car and unable to move. Floyd said he could hear him yelling for help as flames grew and smoke thickened.
“It was definitely scary,” Floyd said. “It was difficult pulling him because he was dead weight. He wasn’t moving.”
St. Johns County Fire Rescue responded to extinguish the fire and begin treatment, officials said. Fire Rescue said the patient was transported to a local trauma center in serious but stable condition.
The Florida Highway Patrol is investigating the cause of the crash.
Floyd said that, in the moment, there was no time to overthink whether to wait for fire crews.
“In that scenario, I just saw an opportunity and went for it. I didn’t think about it,” Floyd said.
“It was a team effort,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of those scenarios not go that way, so I’m just fortunate we were able to get there and get him when we could.”
After years in law enforcement, Floyd said rescues like this are rare — which is why they matter.
“Absolutely,” Floyd said when asked whether saving someone is the highlight of the job. “It’s very rewarding.”