Update at 1:10 p.m. Thursday: Revised to include comments from the mother involved in the crash.
Dallas police Sgt. Donald Boice wasn't ready to deal with another death early Sunday.
He'd worked a fatal crash during his overnight shift and was worried his next call about a car that flipped at an Interstate 35E exit may also have been deadly.
The call sheet said two adults and three children were involved.
"Please, God, not another one tonight — and especially with kids involved," Boice prayed during the drive there.
Before long, the officer was coddling a 3-month-old boy named Jaxon and singing to him to distract the infant from the chaos of first responders treating his parents and clearing the wreckage from the crash.
No one died, and the sergeant's hands-on approach with the baby was captured in photos that went viral on social media — and eventually caught the attention of Jaxon's family.
The job of peace officer is sometimes singing softly to a baby, after removing safely from car seat, while mom is medically treated after car overturns.
— hiringcops (@hiringcops) May 30, 2018
Just like @DallasPD Sgt. Don Boice.
Impressive photos by @SamHdz25 @FOX4
Police Recruitment #hiringcops pic.twitter.com/fs8GR0vedE
"It means the world to me," the boy's mother, Tomecia Dodd, told The Dallas Morning News this week. "It's amazing that he went from police officer mode to father figure mode. Anyone that has children would understand how much that means to you."
Dodd, 23, had driven her boyfriend and their three children from Fort Worth to Dallas for dinner and family time Saturday night.
They were headed home early Sunday, when Dodd's SUV hit a pothole on the Commerce Street exit from I-35E and veered off the road.
"I realized I couldn't gain control," Dodd said. "From that point, I just blacked out, but I remember the motion. My eyes closed and I remember the motion of tumbling."
When Dodd opened her eyes, the SUV was upside down and the kids were crying in their car seats. It was the mother's first time in a crash and she was bruised, but her parental instincts kicked in immediately. She wiggled out of her seat belt and pulled the children out of the car.
Her boyfriend, Jerrett Mouton, was bleeding from a fracture and a head injury. He also blacked out and couldn't help much.
Strangers called police for them.
Boice was helping clear a fatal crash on Riverfront Boulevard about 4 a.m. Sunday when he learned about the I-35E crash.
The 12-year police veteran didn't have to respond — the Dallas County Sheriff's Department would lead the investigation — but he said he went anyway because children were involved and he wanted to make sure they were OK.
"Please don't let my baby die, please don't let my baby die," the parents pleaded to Boice when he got to the scene.
After making sure that the children were unharmed, the officer did his best to calm their traumatized mother and persuade her to get the care she needed.
"It's OK, I need to hold your baby. Please trust me with your baby while you get treated,'" Boice recalled telling Dodd.
With Jaxon in his arms, Boice swayed and sang the same songs he once sang to his own sons. He then took care to find a place to stand where the boy's mother could see him while paramedics treated her in the back of an ambulance.
"At that point, you kind of go from cop to parent real quick — just try to shield the baby," Boice said.
An officer and firefighter looked after Dodd's daughters, ages 5 and 1, and tried to keep them calm.
"We don't forget what it's like to have kids or to look at a kid at a scene and realize, 'That that could be my child too,'" Boice said. "And I'd want somebody treating my child the same way."
Paramedics led Dodd's children sit with her in the back of her ambulance for the ride to the hospital.
Boice remained at the crash site for a while longer and decompressed by talking to other first-responders. Then he headed to his next call.
"We're not just out there to put people in jail, just chase after people," Boice said. "All of us got in this job to help people, whether that's arresting someone that's assaulted them or in this case being able to help these kids get through that traumatic experience."
Mouton was still recovering at home on Thursday and was expecting to be out of work for at least three months. Dodd worried her job as a server wouldn't cover the family's needs, so she created a GoFundMe page to get outside help.
Boice made sure to leave a donation.
"Sorry to hear that his arm was broken," the sergeant wrote on the page, "but glad to hear everyone else is okay. I know this isn't much, but I hope it helps.
Give your precious babies another hug from me."
