Officer Joel Nitchman fights through a tornado to rescue their K-9 partner, in Deer Park, Texas, on Tuesday, January 24, 2023.
Officer Joel Nitchman is seen in the viral video walking out of the police station in the middle of a tornado and heading to his van to rescue his police dog, Ronie, in Deer Park, Texas on the 24th of January, 2023.
CCTV footage shows Nitchman fighting with the wind, and he acknowledges that he couldn't see anything for a while.
He said: "I knew something was bad when things were hitting my face. I knew it was debris of some kind. Once I went around the car, that's when all heck broke loose. I could barely open his door. When I did, he's a smart dog, he saw what was going on outside and he said I'm not coming out."
He was coaxing him and saying: "Come on, buddy. Let's go" but even then it took a while to persuade the dog to come out into the storm.
Nitchman and Roni have been inseparable partners since 2018 and after the video went viral and he said he would do it again, saying: "I love that dog. He's my hip attachment almost every day of the week. He's a part of our family. We can't leave a loved one like that. There's no way I was going to leave him like that."
According to the National Weather Service (NWS) in Houston, an EF3 tornado blasted over Pasadena and Deer Park on Wednesday, with an estimated maximum path length of 18 miles. The tornado's maximum path width was 0.66 miles and its maximum wind speed was 140 mph.
The tornado caused considerable property damage in Deer Park, although there were no fatalities.
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