MINNEAPOLIS, MN (WCMH) — A pair of Minneapolis police officers and a paramedic saved a man’s life after risking their own.
Officer Molly Trupe’s body camera captured the entire thing on video when she and fellow officer Craig Brown and a paramedic, Chad Durand, responded to a call of a man trapped in a storm drain due to rushing flood waters.
“We could look down and you could just see him holding on for dear life,” Brown told WCCO-TV. “He was just screaming and calling for help as much as possible.”
The three do not have any formal water rescue training, but they knew they had no time to waste.
“We saw him hanging on, he was screaming for help, we knew we couldn’t wait for any more people, we knew we had to do something right away,” she said. “[We] saw that there was a rope attached to him saw … so we had to figure out.”
Durand says they carefully made their way down to the man, knowing full well the danger they were in themselves.
“My concern was what if one of us loses our footing balance and gets pulled into the water,” Durand said. “It’s kind of an instinctual thing – his life is on the line.”
“I was on the ledge and I started to walk and it was slippery, so I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl through the weeds and stuff,” Brown said. “My partner was hanging on the back of my belt so I wouldn’t fall.”
Carefully, they managed to get the man to safety. He did not suffer any injuries.
“He was noticeably shaken up, he was very thankful, that he had met us as individuals,” Durand told WCCO-TV.