State Patrol Honors Heroes At Annual Ceremony
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The Minnesota State Patrol honored several people Wednesday who risked their own lives to save others.
The honorees are troopers, police officers, emergency medical personnel and ordinary citizens.
The state patrol's annual awards ceremony highlights heroic acts over the past two years.
Minneapolis Police Officers Krystal Fallon and Ryan Davis said the events of July 26 of last year would live with them forever.
"I actually take that weight to work every single day, so it's something that kind of goes through my mind regularly," Fallon said.
Traffic camera video showed a car traveling at a high rate of speed, veering off Washington Avenue, flying through a barrier and flipping over a concrete wall. The car barely missed a vehicle traveling westbound on Interstate 94 before coming to a rest against the middle barrier.
"The whole shift on the North Side that stepped up taking parts, doing little pieces to make sure we can do what we did," Davis said. "We're the most-visible thing out there, but we weren't the only ones out there doing our job that day."
Fallon ran to the back of the vehicle where she pulled a woman from the back seat. Davis said two people passing by stopped to help him pull out the driver, who was belted and trapped inside the car.
"There were people that remain nameless," Fallon said. "I don't know if we know who they are, but they're out there and they stopped and they helped us, and that's kind of the main thing to recognize is this uniform, you know, it only goes so far, that there are people willing to do the same thing we do that don't get the recognition and aren't getting paid to do it that deserve equal, if not more, recognition than we do."
While Fallon and Davis are being recognized with the Commendation Award, they will be thinking about the unknown people who risked their lives to make a difference.
The passenger survived that crash, but driver Lloyd Cunningham did not. Cunningham's family were able to tell both Fallon and Davis how much their efforts are appreciated.
Both officers say they just reacted and were doing their jobs -- but it is nice to be recognized by their peers.
