Cop recounts harrowing rescue
Published: March 19, 2007
Confronted by rushing, icy, dark water and an injured, unconscious Ithaca man slipping downstream in Cascadilla Gorge, Ithaca Police Officer Kevin McKenna didn’t hesitate.
He plunged in — gun, bullet-proof vest and all — to pull Albert Tran Nguyen, 22, to safety early Saturday morning.
“I wasn’t thinking about anything else,” McKenna said. “I saw him go into the water and I had to take action.”
McKenna’s jump was just the start of a daring, joint-agency rescue that ended with Nguyen being lifted from the gorge and airlifted to the hospital.
At about 4 a.m., McKenna and Ithaca Police Officer Mike Nelson responded to a report of a person at the bottom of the Cascadilla Gorge between Oak Avenue and Cornell’s Ward Laboratory needing assistance, according to police reports.
The officers met the man who had called in the report, who then guided them along a foot trail above the gorge on the south side. The man had heard Nguyen calling for help, police said.
Though there was some ambient light, visibility was low, McKenna said.
“You needed a flashlight to see what you were doing,” he said. “It was pretty dark in there.”
Despite the darkness, the officers spotted Nguyen sitting on an ice shelf on the gorge’s north bank. There was blood running down the left side of his face, and he was yelling incoherently — not acknowledging the officers’ attempts to communicate with him.
While Nelson stayed with the man above the gorge, McKenna slid 50 feet down the bank to make contact with Nguyen.
“I basically sat down and slid, and hoped for the best. I dug my heels into the snow to slow my descent, but that was probably the most nerve-racking thing, that slide to the bottom.”
At the water’s edge, McKenna took in the situation. Nguyen’s temple and left cheekbone, which had a large welt, were bleeding, and blood was flowing from his left ear. Nguyen’s left foot was shoeless and seemed to be injured as well.
“Once I got down there, it was apparent he was in bad shape,” McKenna said. “I recognized he was in serious trouble.”
McKenna also recognized that several yards of turbulent, possibly freezing water separated him from Nguyen, and that the unstable ice shelf on his side of the stream wouldn’t hold his weight.
“It was running water, and it had a decent cover of ice over it, so it had to be freezing or below,” he said.
A fast scan with his flashlight revealed the stream to be, for all practical purposes, fathomless.
“I had no idea how deep the water was,” he said. “It was murky. When I think about it now, it could’ve been over my head for all I knew.”
Nguyen was moaning, so McKenna tried to calm him, telling him to sit still until the Ithaca Fire Department arrived.
When Nguyen began to lie down on the ice shelf, McKenna shouted for him to sit up, the reports said. Despite his encouragement, Nguyen dropped back onto the shelf, which caused it to fracture and drop part way into the water, “leaving (Nguyen’s) head less than an inch from the flowing water.”
Nguyen looked at McKenna and tried to sit up, but to no avail.
“He was lying on the ice shelf with his head close to the water,” McKenna said. “When he flopped back down, he rolled into water and went head first down the stream, completely submerged.”
McKenna jumped, landed in the waist-deep stream, struggled through the current, and grabbed Nguyen. He estimated he was wearing anywhere from 15 to 25 pounds of equipment and clothing, including a leather jacket.
“I picked his entire body up and carried him to solid ground,” he said. “The current was pulling him down.”
McKenna dragged Nguyen to the north bank, 15 feet downstream from where he had fallen in the water, and lifted him onto the ice shelf.
“It wasn’t easy to cross, and it was harder when you’re dragging someone,” he said. “But it was pure adrenaline at that point, and I didn’t even think about it.”
To hear him speak, McKenna’s memory of the events is like clockwork — literally. They arrived at the scene at about 3:55 a.m., he said, and Nguyen dropped into the water at about 4:01 a.m. The immediate crisis had transpired in five minutes.
For the next ten minutes, however, McKenna said he struggled to get on the ice shelf himself while holding Nguyen on the shelf and out of the water — a problem complicated by the fragile ice shelf itself, which kept breaking under his weight.
“Once I found a foothold, I was able to climb out of the water,” he said.
Nelson had slid down on the south side of the gorge when McKenna went into the water, but was unable to reach McKenna and Nguyen on the north side. While Ithaca firefighters rigged lines to climb down to the pair and extract Nguyen safely, McKenna waited with Nguyen.
From the top of the gorge on the north side, Cornell University Police Officer Beverly Hughes tossed down a chemical suit and McKenna covered Nguyen with it to keep him warm.
“I covered him up with it the best I could,” he said.
He monitored Nguyen’s vital signs during the wait, McKenna said. Though Nguyen was unresponsive to stimuli and his eyes were rolled back in his head, he was breathing slowly and had a strong pulse, he added.
“I was concerned about losing the victim,” McKenna said. “He wasn’t in good shape, and it looked like he was getting worse. There was an obvious level of urgency to get him out of there.”
Ithaca Firefighter Jim Crowley climbed down the north side of the gorge at about 4:25 a.m., according to the reports. He and McKenna moved Nguyen onto dry blankets, covered him with other blankets and stabilized his head. Another firefighter arrived and they began to prepare to lift Nguyen from the gorge.
“It wasn’t until Crowley came down that (Nguyen) began to come around,” McKenna said.
When firefighters asked him if he wanted help getting out of the gorge, McKenna said he refused.
“I decided to stay there and make sure (Nguyen) got out, and help in any way possible,” he said.
He also stayed to help Crowley on the narrow bank and ice shelf, which had become so unstable by this time that Crowley was standing in the water for the majority of the time, he said.
Ithaca firefighters, Ithaca police and Bangs ambulance personnel all took part in lifting Nguyen from the gorge safely at 5:18 a.m., fire officials said.
The patient safely away, McKenna walked 20 feet downstream, found an easy grade, and climbed out of the gorge on his own two numb feet. After receiving treatment from ambulance personnel, McKenna went home, changed and tried to thaw out.
“I couldn’t feel my feet,” he said. “It took a while to get warmed back up.”
Nguyen was airlifted to Arnot-Ogden Medical Center in serious condition, has since been treated and released.
“I’m glad he’s ok,” McKenna said. “It would’ve weighed heavily on me personally had I stayed at the top of the gorge and done nothing.”
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