Source: Huffington Post

Two police officers pulled a woman from her sinking car a minute before, they say, she would have drowned.

The two cops, Paul Watts and Simon Russell, were called to the Fisherman’s Wharf in Auckland, New Zealand after the woman’s BMW rolled into the water after 3 p.m. on Tuesday, according to the New Zealand Herald.

When the officers arrived, the car was already about 75 percent submerged.

While two members of the public worked to keep the car above water, Watts found a rock and smashed the back windshield.

“At that time the car actually started to move very fast into the water,” Russell told the Herald. “I was trying to hold the car, slowing it down from entering the water.”

After the window was shattered, the police were able to pull the woman out of the car and to safety, the Telegraph reports.

• Simon Maude / Fairfax Media / Getty Images
  Rescuers plunge into the water to save a woman, whose car went into the water at Northcote Point on February 17, 2015 in Auckland, New Zealand. North Shore Police constables Paul Watts and Simon Russell say they were just doing their job after rescuing a woman from a sinking car the Waitemata Harbour.
• Simon Maude / Fairfax Media / Getty Images
• Simon Maude / Fairfax Media / Getty Images
• Simon Maude / Fairfax Media / Getty Images
• Simon Maude / Fairfax Media / Getty Images

“It was pretty close, probably 30 or 40 seconds after we managed to get the female out of the car, the car was already slipping further into the water,” Watts said, according to the Telegraph. “I’d say she probably only had a maximum of another minute or minute-and-a-half if she hadn’t got out.”

Watts told reporters the rescue was “pretty much part of a routine job being a police officer.”

The woman, whose name has not been released, was hospitalized and is expected to make a full recovery, according to the publication Stuff.

Police are investigating how the car got into the water.

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