Area conservation agents decorated for valor

By Phil Cobb | December 17, 2015 |

Michael A. Maupin

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — In a ceremony Wednesday at the state Capitol, Gov. Jay Nixon awarded the Missouri Medal of Valor to nine public safety officers — including three from northwest Missouri. The award is the state’s highest public safety honor.

The officers, each of whom responded to some kind of deadly threat during 2014, represent police, emergency medical, and fire protection departments as well as the Missouri Department of Conservation, the Missouri Department of Corrections, and the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

“These nine courageous individuals exemplify the bravery and commitment of Missouri’s public safety officers to serving and protecting the public,” Nixon said. “Each story is unique — from subduing an armed attacker to giving medical care while under gunfire to braving floodwaters to entering a burning building to pull trapped victims to safety — but the character of the individuals involved, their decisiveness of action and selfless commitment to protecting the public, is the same.”

Conservation agents from this area who received the award include Michael A. Maupin and Jade Wright of Holt County and Eric E. Abbott of Atchison County.

Maupin, Wright, and Abbott were honored for their actions on Sept. 9, 2014, when more than 9 inches of rain swept across northwest Missouri in a matter of hours, leading to widespread flash flooding.

According to a Missouri Department of Conservation release, Wright and Maupin, along with Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Mike Quilty, used an MDC boat to reach a school bus and driver stranded on Route N north of Mound City.

The boat and trailer had to be hooked to a Missouri Department of Transportation front-end loader to reach a launching point. Swift current had turned the bus around, killed the engine, and pushed it off the road into a fence.

The rescuers were able to get the driver off the bus, into the boat, and back to shore under extremely hazardous conditions.

“It took a couple of attempts to get up to her,” Wright said at the time. “The water was very fast. We were very lucky.”

A few hours afterward, Wright and Maupin helped rescue six people in three vehicles stalled on a flooded stretch of Interstate 29. They rode in the bucket of a MoDOT front-loader to reach those stranded and then hauled them to safety.

On the same day, also on I-29, Abbott and a MoDOT road grader operator rescued a man clinging to a luggage rack on top of a nearly submerged Jeep Cherokee.

Others honored by the governor included:

• Officer Anthony K. Davis of the Manchester Police Department of who rescued two people from a burning building.

• Highway Patrol Cpl. Richard L. Ayers, who rescued a stranded motorist from flooding in Wayne County.

• Corrections Officer Nathan F. Box, who subdued an armed prisoner while rescuing another guard.

• Timothy J. Dorsey, David P. Klump, and Daniel R. Roderick of the West County EMS and Fire Protection District, who provided life-saving first aid under “battlefield-type conditions” to a pair of wounded FBI agents during a law enforcement confrontation with a gunman in the St. Louis suburb of Hanley Hills.