A police officer who grew up in Moorefield was recently decorated for bravery by the governor general.
Detective Constable Ed Downey and two other members of the Durham Regional Police Service Tactical Support Unit were among about 40 individuals receiving Decorations for Bravery at a March 6 ceremony at Rideau Hall. The officers were honored for risking their lives to save a mentally ill man who had climbed a television tower in an attempt to commit suicide.
Downey, was raised in Moorefield and graduated from Norwell District Secondary School in 1985. He joined the Peel Regional police in 1995, and transferred to Durham Region in 2003, joining the tactical squad in 2005. His parents, Clare and Jeannette Downey, now live in West Montrose.
On a bitterly cold night, Jan. 19, 2013, Downey and Detective Constables Paul Couvillon and Keith Lindsay were called to a residence in Clarington to investigate a report of a suspect with a gun threatening to kill people.
When the officers arrived, Downey told the Advertiser in a telephone interview the man was nowhere to be found. However the suspect’s father arrived shortly after and advised police his son had a history of mental illness and on another occasion had climbed the antenna on the house in similar circumstances.
Downey radioed another officer on the grounds and learned there was indeed a man on the antenna.
Downey described the subject as about 30 years old, weighting 300 pounds and a former martial arts champion.
“I started negotiating with the guy … but it was clear right away that he wasn’t going to get off of there. He was going to carry out his threat. He was going to hang himself.”
Two of the officers climbed to the roof immediately while Downey went to get rappelling equipment from their vehicle. When the man jumped from the tower, two of the officers climbed to support his weight, one of them climbed past him and cut a thick scarf from around his neck.
“Now there’s two officers above, and me below, holding onto my partner and the victim. So there’s four of us on the antenna, 25 feet above the second floor of the house, and it’s swaying, because now there’s a thousand pounds of people on it,” Downy recalled.
Downey was eventually able to “fling” the struggling man to the roof, then fought to hold him down and prevent further attempts to jump.
Local firefighters arrived on the scene with a rescue basket. Downey volunteered to rig the equipment; in order to minimize the danger to firefighters posed by the unstable subject, and the man was eventually lowered to the ground and taken to the hospital by ambulance.
Downey estimated from the time officers realized the man was on the tower until they got him safely to the ground, 30 or 40 minutes had elapsed.
“In a life threatening struggle, two minutes is forever. When you look back on it after the fact and realize, holy mackerel, we were up there 30 minutes – that’s an eternity,” he said.
Downey said he was “humbled” to be recognized alongside so many others who had demonstrated bravery, only a few of whom were trained emergency responders.
“They’re just ordinary people. They were just put into circumstances and, out of reflex, they just did it. Some of them saved their neighbours, some of them saved people they didn’t even know.”
