Marine Resources Officers Come to the Rescue

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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