SAN ANTONIO – Instead of wearing the Edgewood ISD badge, the district’s police chief said Officer Tina Egleston is in the hospital under a medically induced coma.
“They’ve had to drill a hole in her head to relieve the swelling,” Edgewood ISD police chief Jesse Quiroga said.
Quiroga said Egleston was the woman critically injured in a crash on I-35 on Saturday. She was on break from working off-duty at the Frost Bank Center.
“The citizen asked, ‘My car is stranded out here,’” Quiroga said. “‘I need, I need gas. You know, but I’m going to walk all the way back.’ [Egleston] didn’t even hesitate.”
San Antonio police said Egleston and the person she was helping were parked on the right shoulder of the highway when another car crashed into them.
Both Egleston and the person she was helping were sent to the hospital.
Quirogas said Egleston has a traumatic brain injury, with a fractured skull, fractured ribs and a brain bleed.
“One of the things I told her, ‘Officer Egleston, you don’t have permission to be here, so I need you to get back to duty as soon as possible,” said Quirogas, who stopped by the hospital. “One of the things about Officer Egleston is she always follows orders and directives.”
Though not in an Edgewood ISD uniform that night, Quiroga said Egleston’s actions show who she is.
“She truly is a model of what a public servant should be,” Quiroga said. “She does put others before herself.”
