In The News
Kentucky owner-operator gets second hero award
PITTSBURGH — An owner-operator from Morehead, Kentucky, has been awarded one of the nation's highest honors for heroism.
Clinton D. Blackburn is one of 18 individuals who have been named recipients of the Carnegie Medal, given by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission 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.
Blackburn rescued Darrell L. Herndon from assault, in Bardstown, Kentucky, March 12, 2014, an act for which he was also named the Goodyear Highway Hero of the year during the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, last March.
A jailer, Herndon, 56, was transporting a male prisoner in a police cruiser when the prisoner, who was in the back seat, slipped from his handcuffs and partially entered the vehicle's front-seat area through a small opening in the passenger compartment partition.
Extending an arm around Herndon's neck, the prisoner began to choke him, but Herndon was able to maintain control of the vehicle as he pulled it from the highway partially onto the grass median.
Approaching the scene from the opposite direction, Blackburn, 44, saw Herndon's vehicle lurch from the highway and come to an abrupt stop, and he then witnessed the assault.
Blackburn pulled his truck off the highway, exited and ran to the driver's side of the police cruiser.
By then, the assailant had entered the front-seat area and was continuing to choke Herndon.
Partially entering the vehicle, Blackburn pushed the assailant away from Herndon, breaking his chokehold, but the assailant then removed Herndon's gun from its holster and threatened to kill them both.
Blackburn grabbed the barrel of the gun and struggled against the assailant for control of it as Herndon dropped from the vehicle to the ground.
Able to twist the gun from the assailant's grasp, Blackburn held him at gunpoint until Herndon recovered and secured him. Herndon sought hospital treatment for minor injury, and Blackburn sustained bruising and a cut.
Both recovered.
"I didn't feel anything" during the experience, recalled Blackburn — not even fear, he told The Trucker Assistant Editor Dorothy Cox when he received the Highway Hero award. "I saw the prisoner had a choke-hold on him and I knew right then he needed help."
It all ended the right way: "Nobody got hurt," Herndon commented. "But I'm sure glad he stopped" to help. "The good Lord wasn't ready for me that day."
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