KEARNS, Utah, Jan. 26, 1016 (Gephardt Daily) — Three local police officers are being called heroes after they risked their lives to save an elderly couple from their burning home
Unified Police officer Brandon Sulich was in his formal dress uniform Monday morning, just minutes from leaving with his unit for the funeral of fallen UPD officer Doug Barney, when he heard a radio call about a fire about two blocks away.
“They said ‘We’re going to leave at 8:15,'” Sulich said of his superior officers, who spoke in a briefing minutes earlier. “They made it very specific.”
And Sulich, an officer for just 11 months, is still on probation and intent on keeping his job. After the briefing, he even had gone to his car early to ensure he would not be late.
“I had my car radio going, and I heard dispatch announce there was a house fire nearby, and when they put out the address I realized I was probably about 30 seconds away,” Sulich said.
The home was at 4380 W. 5255 South. Sulich weight the risk of being late against the opportunity to be of service.
“The priority to save lives is more important,” he said.
“It wasn’t like I struggled with it,” Sulich said. “About how long it took me to get my hand up and put my shifter in drive was about how long it took to make the decision.”
Sulich drove the two or so blocks to the burning house, which had flames shooting through the roof and was approximately 40 percent engulfed. The dispatch said an elderly couple was in the basement, unable to get themselves out.
Sulich entered through the front door, passed through the lightly damaged ground floor area, and found stairs to the basement.
The man and woman were in a downstairs bedroom, discussing a plan, and did not seem to understand the urgency of escape, Sulich said. So he ran back upstairs to look for an escape route, and found the safest way was out the door he came in. A burning ember floated between his shirt and his neck, and he raced back down the stairs.
“So at that point, I kind of hand to draw the line,” Sulich told listeners at a news conference on Tuesday. “I was always taught that you be respectful to elders, you give them their space and their time, and let them do things at their own pace. This was a situation where I had to go against my intuition and had to get a little rough.”
Both residents were frail. The woman started slowly up the stairs, and Sulich tried to hurry the man.
“I actually turned him around, grabbed him underneath the arms and drug him up stairs,” Sulich said.
Sgt. Trudy Cropper and officer Scott Folkers, of the West Valley City Police Department, had heard the call, and were in the vicinity to cover shifts for Unified Police Officers so they could attend Barney’s funeral, held at the Maverik Center.
“The elderly woman was taking her time coming upstairs,” Folkers said. He and Cropper found a wheeled walker with a platform seat, and decided to use it to roll the woman out.
Cropper picked up the story from that point.
“I turned to help the male, and officer Solich stepped back, and I didn’t realize he had on his full Class A uniform and that he was on his way to the funeral,” Cropper said.
“He wasn’t dispatched to be there, and he stopped to help these people,” she said. “He was only there about 3 and a half minutes, and we got the couple out, then he proceeded to go to the funeral…. And that’s pretty amazing, that he wasn’t dispatched and he stopped on his way to a funeral to help these people.”
The two elderly residents escaped with minor injuries. Their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, who lived upstairs, were at work or school at the time of fire.
And Solich made it back to his car, then back to his precinct.
“I got there on time,” he said, adding that he told coworkers he’d just come from inside a burning house.
“Everyone said, ‘Well, he does smell a little smoky,'” Sulich said.
Sulich said that if responding to the urgent dispatch call had made him late, he feels like officer Barney would have understood.
“He would have been happy to respond,” he said. “If Doug was here, he would have wanted to respond as well.”
