County Deputies Honored for Actions
by Randy Pierce
Three Madison County Sheriff’s Department deputies and one of its sergeants have been recognized for their heroic life-saving actions in a pair of separate incidents which had occurred during the past year.
During the 32nd annual awards banquet hosted jointly by the Southwestern Illinois Law Enforcement Commission and Southern Illinois Police Chiefs Association, held last month in Fairview Heights, Deputies Ryan Fry and Blake Johnson were called forward to be recognized for their reactions when called to a serious single-vehicle rollover crash.
Two occupants of a vehicle had been ejected from the vehicle they were riding in with one of them, believed to be the driver, pinned underneath the front passenger side of it.
Conscious and asking for help while suffering in obvious critical condition, that individual was freed from his plight when Fry and Johnson were successful in lifting the vehicle so the victim could be freed and provided with medical attention by emergency medical service first responders also present.
Sergeant Cade Koelker and Deputy Jacob Quade were part of a group of five professional first responders who were called to assist a municipal police department after someone had been stabbed.
To earn SILEC/SIPCA life-saving awards, Koelker and Quade located the suspect in the stabbing and took him into custody then noticed a serious wound on the chest of the victim, leading them to begin administering first-aid techniques with hospital personnel saying the man who was injured would have died had it not been for their actions.
From left, Madison County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Marcos Pulido with Deputies Blake Johnson and Ryan Fry.
