LAS CRUCES - It was like the driver had hit the brakes for an animal darting across the road, Dustin Stober said.
Except the road was the 75 mph passing lane of Interstate 10. And there was a little girl jumping out of the passenger seat of the black Nissan, waving her hands and screaming that her mother had been shot.
Naval Petty Officer 2nd Class Stober knew something was wrong.
"I've never had this happen before," said Stober, 30, of Lancaster, Calif., who was driving to Dallas with his family. "I'd seen the wound before. I've lost officers. I lost a pilot. I've witnessed friends die."
Corina Dominguez, 33, of Baldwin Park, Calif., had shot herself in the chest Thursday morning - after a failed attempt to get her 9-year-old daughter to kill her, said New Mexico State Police Lt. Roman Jimenez.
Sgt. Dominguez, a medic with the Army Reserve's 437th Ground Ambulance Company, was driving with her daughter and their two dogs when she began to breathe heavily - possibly from an asthma or emphysema attack - and handed her daughter a 9 mm handgun, Jimenez said.
"She told her to shoot her. And she wouldn't," said Jimenez. "The daughter said she has had these kinds of attacks before, but she'd never been suicidal."
After firing the shot, the car rolled to a stop, just slightly in the paved left shoulder of the road, in a construction zone about 25 miles west of Las Cruces. Stober, a Naval contractor who trained in emergency response with the Auxiliary Security
Force, immediately pulled in front of Dominguez's car in a blocking maneuver and told his wife to call 911.
Deborah Stober, 25, a daycare worker who had the couple's two sons, ages 9 and 7, in the back seat, rushed the little girl to her car.
Inside the black Nissan, Dominguez, suffering from a massive chest wound, struggled to breathe. Her pulse and breathing became slow. "I knew what to do in this situation," Stober said. "And I couldn't do anything."
Stober put the car - still in drive - in park and turned it off. He retrieved the handgun from the floor in front of the woman, unloaded it and placed it on the side of the road. He laid the seat back and covered her with a blanket one of the construction workers provided.
"I hope the daughter's OK," he said.
Dominguez' company had returned a year ago from deployment in Kuwait, where she taught combat lifesaver classes to fellow soldiers, according to an Army Reserve news release about her company's homecoming. In the release, Dominguez said she was planning to begin medical school and looking forward to accompanying her daughter to softball.
Dominguez' aunt, Linda Robinson, of Rochester, N.Y., said mother and daughter were driving to Oklahoma City, Okla., to see Dominguez's father - and she couldn't fathom Thursday's turn of events.
"Her only child, love of her life," Robinson said. "I don't know why she would do that in front of her only child, who she loved so much and missed so much. (Corina) was popular, fun-loving, an outgoing, bright person."
Traffic was diverted until Thursday afternoon while officers investigated the scene. The girl and her dogs were taken from the scene by New Mexico State Police, so she could call her father, who is expected to arrive in Las Cruces tonight.
"We're thankful that there were passers-by who were willing and able to assist this small child out of the vehicle," said Jimenez, who said alcohol or other drugs were not thought to be a factor in the shooting. "That says a lot, I think."
Dominguez' body was transported to Albuquerque for autopsy.
