Vass officer 'just held on' during crash with wrong-way driver

With lights flashing and siren blaring, Andrew Schofield poised his patrol car between the illegal driver and other vehicles. He hoped the lights and sound would alert her to stop, but she plowed into him instead.

“I love my job. I love coming to work every day,” said Schofield, who was treated and released for minor injuries following the crash.

What he doesn’t love is the attention. He says he was just doing his job.

“You know, we have to save lives out there. I feel like that’s what I did, because if I wouldn’t have, somebody else behind me could have gotten hurt,” said Schofield, 29. “There were other vehicles behind me.”

The officer got the call about the wrong-way at about 8:15. He encountered the Nissan Maxima going about 60 mph.

“I made a split-second decision to stay in the lane and stop her from hitting anybody else,” he said.

He turned his cruiser to a slight angle, stopped and braced for impact.

“I just held onto the steering wheel,” Schofield said. “That’s all you can do is just hold on.”

After the collision, the officer called it in and ran to check on the driver, identified as 67-year-old Donna Kramer. Police said she is diabetic and might have suffered a diabetic seizure.

She was barely conscious after the wreck, Schofield said.

“I told her to hang on, EMS and everybody were on the way,” he said.

The officer said he was just doing what he was trained to do.

“It’s not like you could just follow her up the road in the wrong lanes,” Schofield said. “That would have just added to more chaos.”