DURHAM -- A police officer in Durham is being called a hero after braving frigid waters to rescue two women from a submerged car Wednesday. 

“The car just started sliding, there was a lot of snow and ice everywhere,” recalls Laporsha Allen.

Allen and her mother were driving to the grocery store on Wednesday when they lost control on Dearborn Drive right near an icy creek, but the didn't know the creek was there until the front of their car hit the guardrail, the back slipped off the road, and the floor of their car started taking on water. 

“I just felt like we had to get out of here. We had seat belts on, the windows were rolled up, and so when the car started filling up of course it shut off so nothing was working, locks, you know you’re not thinking.”

It's then that Allen clenched her cell phone between her teeth as she had put it in her mouth to stay dry and screamed for help, eventually calling police. 

First to the scene was Cpl. J.J. Barazandeh. 

Barazandeh says while driving there, “I happened to see out of the corner of my eye two sets of hands waving down a deep embankment and I just thought those were passerby’s kind of pointing out an accident.”

Once out of his car, he realized the women were still at the car which was almost completely filled with water. So he took off his gear and went to work. 

“Time was not on their side that’s why I just kind of, at the time I wasn’t thinking about myself I just knew you know that I had to help them,” says Barazandeh.

Allen remembers, “Of course we went into shock, we were screaming, it’s almost like a movie, we were panicking.”

Barazandeh says he started pulling each women to saftey but because the bottom of the creek was soft he had them lay flat on their stomach to float and with the help of a couple drivers who pulled over to help, all were brought back on land. 

“I’m just thankful because it could have been much worse, I could’ve had my children with me. It was really an eye opening experience,” says Allen.