Illinois deputies helped avert disaster early Monday morning, preventing a pregnant woman whose brakes failed from plunging into a bitingly cold lake.
Jaelyn Mocaby, the pregnant driver, called 911 around 2 a.m. Monday to report that her brakes were failing. Mocaby declined to be interviewed by NBC News as the incident has left her emotionally shaken.
Mocaby told the 911 dispatcher that she couldn’t slow down or turn off the car, according to a recording of the call. She was able to put her Chevy Malibu into neutral at the dispatcher’s prompting which helped slow the car down slightly.
But the car was still moving downhill, Mocaby told the dispatcher.
“I’m 20-weeks pregnant, I cannot die today,” Mocaby said during the 911 call.
According to the sheriff’s office, deputies who caught up to Mocaby saw that her brake lights were on but the car was not slowing down.
Deputy Tyler Coffey was in the area and responded to the call, deciding to drive ahead of Mocaby’s car and hit the brakes on his own vehicle.
“I’m in front of her now,” Coffey said in the footage. “Yeah, she’s getting close to that dead-end.”
Mocaby’s car hit Coffey’s bumper, finally stopping just roughly a quarter mile short of Crab Orchard Lake. Williamson County Sheriff Jeff Diederich said in a statement that had the deputies delayed their response, Mocaby “would have likely gone into the water.”
Coffey told NBC Chicago that he was just glad the woman was safe.
“I’m glad I was in the area and very close to her that way we could have gotten that vehicle stopped in time,” Coffey said.
Though Mocaby declined an interview, her mother, Carol Mocaby, told NBC News that her daughter was driving a car that she shared with her boyfriend and wasn’t very familiar with the vehicle. Her daughter was “scared to death” and worried about her baby.
“I just think she had a whirlwind of emotions going on at the time, and not really knowing what to do,” Carol Mocaby said.
Mocaby has been overwhelmed by the attention the incident has garnered, her mother said. The family is working to keep her as “calm as possible” as Mocaby is dealing with a high-risk pregnancy already.
Her mother is grateful that the deputies who responded were nearby and reacted so quickly to the situation.
“For them to be there at that time, that was just a complete miracle,” she said.
