Dayton, Ohio, Police Officer Byron Branch, who lost his leg in the line of duty over seven years ago, is headed to Paris, France, for the 2024 Paralympics.

On December 16, 2016, Branch was hit by a vehicle while assisting a semi-truck driver on the highway, causing him to have his left leg amputated.

“I was responding to an accident on the highway,” Branch shared with Fox & Friends. “There was a semi on the side of the road that just got in an accident. I went to check on the driver and make sure everything was OK with them before I headed on. He came out of his vehicle. I told him, ‘For your safety, let’s talk on the other side of my vehicle.’ Next thing I know, I woke up in the hospital.”

“I’d only been a police officer for eight months, so I had never really got the full-on experience,” Branch shared with WDTN.

While some would have struggled with this life-changing news, Branch let it motivate him. Just one day shy of the one-year crash date, Branch returned to full-time duties as a Dayton officer.

In 2018, Branch received a phone call from the United States Fencing Association (USFA), offering a potential opportunity to represent the country in para-fencing. Branch began fencing in high school as a way to stay active in the baseball offseason but soon found out that he was gifted at the sport.

Just months after receiving the call from USFA, Branch won a gold medal in the Pan American Games in Canada and again in 2022 and 2024, drawing from his impressive 16 years of fencing experience.

“I just tried to apply what I knew from the fencing game to the wheelchair game,” he said. “There was a little bit of a learning curve, but nothing too extreme. I think what’s most important once you go through a traumatic event is to try and get yourself back on the level to where you were prior to the event.”

Now, Branch will be able to push his athletic dreams even further by representing the United States at the Paralympics.

“I’m most excited just to be in the atmosphere with all the other athletes there who are going to be representing the country, and then all the athletes from all over the world being in that kind of atmosphere,” he said. “It’s incredible.”

Branch was named Dayton’s Police Officer of the Year in 2018, according to the Dayton Daily News.