West Penn Township Sergeant Melissa Ruch was just doing her job Wednesday night: Assisting a motorist she thought was stranded.

melissa-ruchShe pulled her cruiser over on Pennsylvania’s Highway 309 and as she approached the “disabled” car, the man grabbed her and threw her over a guardrail. She tumbled down a steep 35-foot embankment, ABC 6 reports.

“Her shirt is like sliced from–we don’t know what it’s sliced yet from,” Trooper David Boehm says, according to WNEP. “The person that we’re looking for is a Hispanic male, 6’2″ to 6’4″, 240 to 260 pounds. He was wearing a black t-shirt and blue jeans, the kind that go way down below your knees and possibly in a dark colored Nissan Maxima.”

Several departments converged on the scene when Ruch’s “officer down” alert went off. But by the time they arrived, police say he had already driven off.

Ruch told officers she managed to use a stun gun on the man before she was thrown down the hill, the Times News reports.

The paper identifies the suspect as a “black male.”

Due to her injuries — which were later deemed to be non-life threatening — she was flown to Lehigh Valley Hospital Cedar Crest campus.

“One of my waitresses called me and told me there was an officer down and state police with armed rifles, so I flew up here from my other business to be with my girls,” Melissa Hasamein, who owns Happy’s Diner near the scene, tells WNEP.

“It’s pretty terrifying, definitely terrifying. It’s not something you really hear from around here or want to see happening around here, so it’s pretty scary,” according to Jenna Shiner of West Penn Township.

State police are handling the investigation.