Round Rock Police received a call at 7 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, from a father worried about his daughter, whom he could not reach. She has a disability, he told dispatchers, and uses a scooter to get to work in the La Frontera shopping center from her apartment nearby. It’s normally a 10-minute trip.
Officers knew the store where she worked was closed, but Sgt. Shelby Ingles went looking for her. Ingles found her in front of the store, stuck on the ice on her scooter. Her phone had slipped out of her hand and dropped out of reach on the pavement. Ingles recalls the scene:
She wasn’t wearing gloves or a heavy coat, and Ingles estimates if they got there 30 minutes later she would have needed care at a hospital. She said her hands “were hurting really bad,” Ingles recalled.
Welfare check calls aren’t unusual for RRPD – the woman’s parents were in Florida, so couldn’t check on her themselves – but the multiple days of sub-freezing temperatures and widespread power outages certainly changed the dynamic.
For Ingles and the other officers involved – Sgt. Kris Mayo and Officer Adam Rankin – weather conditions don’t change the department’s basic mission: Take care of the community. Ingles likens it to the Golden Rule:
