FORWARD TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Two police officers are being recognized for saving the life of a woman who was injured in a triple shooting outside a bar in Forward Township.
Elizabeth Township Officer Jason Shallenberger and Elizabeth Borough Officer Garrett Kimmell were among first responders called Aug. 6 to Saloon 136, where a man and two women were shot in the parking lot. The man, 27-year-old Johnathan Minnie, died from his injuries.
When Shallenberger arrived at the scene, he began treating one of the women who had been shot multiple times and was bleeding badly from her leg. Police said he used a bar patron’s shirt to apply pressure to her leg while elevating it, helping to slow the bleeding.
"I knelt down beside her. I could see she was shot in the leg, so I put down a lot of pressure over the wound with my hands,” Shallenberger said.
Once Kimmell arrived at the scene, he got a tourniquet from a personal medical bag. He and Shallenberger placed the tourniquet on the woman’s leg to stop the bleeding, according to police.
Medics told the officers that had the tourniquet not been used, the woman could've bled out.
"The trauma surgeon relayed to them that the female more likely than not would've bled to death before she arrived at the hospital,” Kimmell said.
The entire incident was captured on Kimmell’s body camera. He is the only officer in the Elizabeth Borough who wears one and said it’s essential to the job.
"Regardless of what you're doing, it captures everything that I do when I'm on an incident – good or bad - and it protects me, my fellow officers and the public,” he said.
Shallenberger and Kimmell will each receive the Life Saving Award next month for their actions.
The officers told Channel 11 News that it’s not the award they're looking forward to most, it's meeting the victims whom they helped save.