Alabama Marine Resources Officers Come to the
Rescue
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January 12, 2007
By DAVID RAINER
When the Alabama Conservation Advisory Board meets Feb. 10 in
Montgomery there will be two special guests who will be recognized
by Conservation Commissioner Barnett Lawley.
Marine Resources Conservation Enforcement Officers Jason Downey and
John Knapp will be recognized for their response to an incident in
south Mobile County last December.
Downey and Knapp had just wrapped up a shift of duty at 11 p.m.
during roe mullet season and were coming off the Dauphin Island
Bridge when they noticed something out of place.
“We saw a dim red light out in the water, about 50 to 60 feet out in
the water,” said Downey, who has been an officer with Marine
Resources for 3 ½ years. “We really couldn’t tell what it was. We
thought it might be a net vessel or something like that.
The closer we got, we noticed it was actually two red lights. We
realized it was a car upside down. It was a Dodge Durango upside
down in the bay.”
By the time the officers turned the blue lights on and stopped, they
noticed a female in the water.
"She was out there hollering and screaming that there was somebody
else in the car,” Downey said. “We don’t know how she got out, but
she was outside the vehicle.
Whether it was the training that kicked on, or just a commitment to
help anyone in trouble, Downey and Knapp shed their equipment belts
and jumped into the frigid waters.
“We were looking for a way to get in the vehicle, but all the doors
were locked,” Downey said. “We don’t know how that happened.”
“We went around to the back, where it had the hatch,” said Knapp,
who has been with Marine Resources for 4 ½ years. “We yanked on the
hatch and it came open.”
Opening the hatch was progress, but they were far from getting the
passenger out of the vehicle, which was upside down in chest-deep
water.
“We still couldn’t see the guy because there was so much water in
the vehicle,” Downey said. “We hollered toward the front of the
vehicle and he responded. He said about a foot of room between his
head and the floorboard of the vehicle. We told him the doors were
locked and asked him to see if he could unlock them.
“But he was on the passenger’s side and the side he was on had been
crushed on impact. So there was no way to get him out on that side.
We went around to the driver’s side of the vehicle. By the time we
got around to the other side, he had managed to get the doors
unlocked, but we still couldn’t see him because the center console
was so tall.”
Downey spotted the 20-year-old male’s hand sticking out under the
console and Knapp spotted the trapped passengers legs.
“We decided we could get him through by pulling him through to the
driver’s side,” Downey said. “We asked him to go limp and hold his
breath. We pulled him under the console under the water and yanked
him out. He had a gash on his head. He was acting a little
disoriented. I guess he was shook up from the wreck.”
By the time the rescue was complete, they realized how cold it was –
water temperature in the 50s and air temperature in the 30s.
“It was cold, especially when you got out of the water and in the
wind,” Knapp said.
By the time the pair had freed the passenger from the wreck, a car
had stopped to offer assistance. Downey and Knapp got the person to
call 911. The call was routed to the Coast Guard and then to the
State Troopers.
“We gave them (the accident victims) our jackets because they were
cold,” Downey said. “The ambulance got there and checked him, but he
refused to go to the hospital.”
Downey said the driver said she was distracted before she lost
control.
“What we got out of them was they were traveling south toward
Dauphin Island,” he said. “One of them pointed at something in the
water on the Mississippi Sound side. They looked over there and when
they looked back they were running off the road. They may have
over-corrected and the vehicle started to roll.”
“They were lucky,” Knapp added. “If that cab had crushed down a
little more, that whole cab would have been full of water.”
Knapp said about the only experience similar to that one occurred
during Hurricane Katrina.
“After Hurricane Katrina, we were going through the water, going
from door to door, trying to find people,” he said.
Major John T. Jenkins, Chief of Enforcement with Marine Resources,
said the response by Downey and Knapp is an indication of the
quality of the department’s enforcement personnel.
“You can’t train or supervise people and make them just care – to
care and do the right thing,” Jenkins said. “This is just one
incident, but our officers stop and help people all the time. It’s
outside the framework of their jobs, but they do it because they
care about the community and we are part of the community.”
Jenkins said the action of his staff during Hurricane Katrina is
something that did not get much attention.
“In the middle of the storm, there were four of us working with
Bayou La Batre,” he said. “By the time the storm had blown by, we
had all of our 17 people out.
There were 32 people we brought out in the middle of the storm, and
then we pretty well stayed there 60 days afterward, doing whatever
needed to be done. That was not just our division, it was the whole
Conservation Department. I watched our officers and Wildlife and
Freshwater Fisheries officers carrying people lunch, carrying them
ice or whatever because it was the right thing to do.
“That’s why I’m always so proud of our folks. They always seem to go
the extra mile to do what’s right and help the public.”
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