A 25-year-old Colorado state trooper who crawled across an icy pond to save a 10-year-old boy is among 21 Americans and Canadians being awarded medals for heroism by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission on Wednesday.
Daniel Harrison Haley of Greeley was off duty with his family when he saw Brenndan Daviet fall through the ice and into a freezing pond near the Greeley Family FunPlex on Nov. 27, 2010.
He ran to the bank and then skimmed across the ice toward the boy, until the ice gave way when he was about 7 feet from the boy. He struggled onward to reach the boy and got them both to the shore, though both were treated for hypothermia.
” The medal is given throughout the United States and Canada to those who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the lives of others,” the commission stated in its announcement of honorees.
The Pittsburgh-based fund has honored 9,516 heroes with medals and $34.2 million in financial grants, scholarships and death benefits since its inception in 1904 by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie after he was inspired by rescuers in a coal mine disaster that killed 181 people in at Harwick, Pa.
In 2010 the fund honored Deer Creek Middle School math teacher Dave Benke, who tackled a gunman who had already wounded two students.
In 2009 , Weld County truck driver Jorge Orozco-Sanchez of Firestone was honored for going into the smoke-filled wreckage of a wrecked SUV twice to save a 4-year-old and 1-year-old children.
Their mother was killed when the SUV she was driving crossed into the path and hit Orozco-Sanchez’s grain truck head-on U.S. 85 in Weld County .
