Page 53 - December 2021

Officers honored for harrowing rooftop rescue
So much could have gone wrong.
A report of a person with a knife. A suicidal man running from rooftop to rooftop across apartment buildings.
In the end, the best-case scenario played out for everyone, thanks to a harrowing save by Sergeants Michael Walsh and Thomas Hanrahan and Officers Mamadou Diarra and Steven Sreiniawski. Their collective actions earned the quartet the Chi- cago Police Memorial Foundation’s Officers of the Month Award for November.
Around 6 p.m. on Sept. 5, the four responded to a call of someone with a knife in the 500 block of North Pine Street. They arrived to find a man who had climbed to the roof of a five-story apartment building. He told police on scene he was depressed, suicidal and had a knife — and then threatened to kill himself by jumping from the roof.
Despite the officers’ attempts to persuade the man to come down from the roof, he refused and began to run onto neigh- boring rooftops, officials said.
Around that time, a Chicago Fire Department ambulance and ladder truck arrived, which gave Walsh an opportunity to climb up and talk with the man. The police quartet all reached the rooftop to see that the man did indeed have a knife. Although they were able to convince him to drop it, the man ran from the officers before stopping at a far corner, where he sat on the ledge, tipped himself backward and began to fall.
Without hesitation or regard for his safety, Walsh somehow grabbed the man and prevented him from plunging off the rooftop. Officials said body-camera footage shows Walsh catch-
ing the man’s ankle and the man dangling for several seconds in Walsh’s grasp.
As he did so, Sreiniawski, Diarra and Hanrahan pulled the man up while also ensuring Walsh’s safety. No injuries to Walsh or the other officers were reported. The man was taken into pro- tective custody and hospitalized after being deemed suicidal with a diagnosis of paranoia and schizophrenia.
“Thank to our awardees’ bravery, a suicidal subject’s life was saved from near death,” CPMF Executive Director Phil Cline said. “It is our honor to name these sergeants and officers our November officers of the month.”
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ DECEMBER 2021 53