A Hancock County, Mississippi Sheriff’s deputy is alive today because his K9 partner saved his life on the evening of May 25th. A multi-agency task force has been established to hunt down three men who meant to murder Deputy Todd Frazier. [Scroll Down For Video]

Frazier was investigating a lone male sitting in a car parked near a rest stop when two other men engaged him. While he was distracted, the driver of the vehicle got out and the three men ambushed Frazier.

They told him he was going to die and that they were going to slit his throat. The men began dragging Frasier towards the nearby woods to carry out the grisly murder.

Frazier managed to get one hand free. However, he didn’t go for his gun, his Tazer or his pepper spray. Frazier hit the button to automatically open the door that houses his K9 partner, Lucas, a Belgian Malinois.

Lucas jumped into action and immediately charged the three men. He bit at least one, and possible two of the men, and successfully stopped the attack.

“The three of them were dragging him toward the wooded area, and he was able to break one hand free to activate the button that opens the door and it released Lucas,” Chief Deputy Don Bass said.

“We don’t know how many he got, we just know he had blood all over him,” Sheriff Ricky Adam said.

The automatic door released was only recently installed on a handful of the sheriff’s office K9 units.

Deputy Frazier suffered a cut to his head, which appears to have been made with a box cutter, along with other injuries.

Officers are wary that this may have been an attempt to make good on numerous reported threats against police officers made by several gangs across the country in recent months.

According to an interview with a local media outlet:

“I had three people on me and I’m not a very big man, and they basically whipped my butt,” Frazier told the kids. “And luckily thank God I had Lucas here, and I had a button on my belt that I wear, and when I hit the button Lucas jumped out of the car and attacked all three of them and they ran away. That’s why he’s my hero.”

Lucas was in the back of Frazier’s patrol vehicle, and he already knew not only something, but everything was wrong.

“He knew. I could hear him coming. I couldn’t see anything because the blood was all in my eyes, but I could hear him coming, growling and making these sounds… he sounded like a wolf,” said Frazier. “I thought, ‘Now he’s gonna get you.'”

Source: Clarion Ledger