Heroic Actions

Thurman Canton
HPD
“Call 911,” screamed Debbie Hallman’s husband, waking her before the alarm sounded. Their 32-year-old son was on the second-story roof with a noose around his neck. “It took about two seconds to realize this wasn’t a bad dream but a real nightmare,” Hallman wrote.

Police and firefighters soon arrived and began talking to her son, who wouldn’t answer and wouldn’t remove the rope around his neck, Hallman wrote. “They told me to stay inside.”

Instead she snuck out the back door. “I saw Officer Thurman Canton on the roof. When he started talking, my son listened,” Hallman wrote. Canton calmed her son, helped him remove the noose and safely leave the roof.

“As soon as he could, Officer Canton hugged my son,” she wrote. “Can you picture an HPD officer hugging a man who could have knocked him off the roof in an instant?

“When I thanked him, I saw a man filled with compassion, and when he left, I’m pretty sure I saw a shadow of wings,” Hallman wrote.

Leonard Frankel, Damian Gonzales, Richard Hernandez, Charles Hosmer, Anthony Janke, Troy Lynch, Fredrick Stewart, Kim Zawada
Fire
“This crew’s care and their quick response to my heart attack saved my life,” wrote George Paul. “I was told that I was about 15 minutes or less from meeting my maker. On behalf of my wife and myself, thank you from the bottom of my heart, which is beating again.”

Roger Gunnels
HPD
An emergency room patient at Christus St. Joseph Hospital was on the second-story ledge trying to commit suicide, wrote Ray Higgins. Sgt. Roger Gunnels, who was working an extra job at the hospital, went out on the ledge to rescue the patient.

“This small roof is slanted and slick,” Higgins wrote. “A slip or fall could have meant serious injuries for Roger, the patient or one of my security officers.”

Yet, the officers brought the resisting patient up and over a ledge separating the roof from a balcony area, Higgins wrote.

“We would like to recognize Sgt. Gunnels’ tremendous courage during this harrowing rescue.”