Knight Ridder Newspapers

DALLAS – A man in his 30s died early Tuesday as rescuers tried to free him from a quagmire of mud that swallowed him to the waist after he ran from Dallas County deputies during a traffic stop.

A Sheriff’s Department spokesman noted that the overnight temperatures slipped into the mid-40s and said exposure could have been to blame.

“There’s a good strong wind out of the north,” Sgt. Don Peritz said. “Exposure out here would be tough on healthy folks.”

The man died some time after 1:30 a.m. in a muddy, freshly plowed field near Seagoville in southern Dallas County, Peritz said.

He said the Dallas County Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death. Officials were working to confirm the man’s identity Tuesday.

Deputies also perplexed about why the man ran after they stopped him about 1:12 a.m. because of “registration issues” related to his 2001 Chevrolet pickup, Peritz said.

The man had no outstanding warrants, and deputies learned that the truck’s owner had probably loaned it to him.

The man lost his jacket and a shoe during the chase, Peritz said.

The deputies had difficulty finding him in the dark field, but they used an infrared device to find him struggling in waist-high mud about 200 yards from the road.

They tried lifting him out, Peritz said, “but the more they pulled, the more they started to sink.”

Peritz said they realized that some kind of vehicle was needed, and fire departments from Wilmer, Hutchins, Seagoville and nearby Kaufman County sent crews to help.

But no one had a vehicle that could traverse the mud without getting stuck, Peritz said.

A helicopter rescue was ruled out because the stiff winds made flying dangerous.

“In the meantime,” Peritz said, “he expires.”

Finally, Kaufman County sent two all-terrain vehicles with huge tires that were used to tow the man’s body out of the mud on a backboard.

Peritz said he did not know why the ATVs weren’t brought in sooner.

He estimated that about 24 people participated in the rescue attempt.

“The guys are disappointed because they really wanted to get this guy out,” he said. “You can see it in their faces.”

Ted Ryan, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth, said Tuesday that the air temperature around 1 a.m. was about 45 degrees.

But, he added, “the wind chill probably made it feel 10 degrees colder” and water temperatures were about 50 degrees, which is how cold the mud would have been.

“A 50-degree water temperature is enough to bring on hypothermia in just a couple of hours,” Ryan said.

Copy the Story Link