Officer a hero to stabbing victim
An angry mob was circling but Const. David Drummond wouldn’t budge — he had his fingers in a dying man’s stab wounds, trying to stem the blood loss.
“I think we only had four or five officers that were keeping a bubble around me, and people were coming at us,” said Drummond, a Windsor police officer since 2003. “It was chaotic. It was something else to put yourself in a situation with hundreds, maybe 1,000 people at once with an obviously volatile situation.”
Drummond was among nine officers who received St. John Ambulance Lifesaving Awards during a Windsor Police Services Board meeting on Thursday.
Eight officers received Silver Lifesaving Awards for separate incidents. Police didn’t give details.
Drummond received a Gold Level Lifesaving Award, which recognizes he risked his own safety to help someone. He earned it on Sept. 30, 2018.
It had already been a tumultuous night.
“That was a night I’m going to remember forever, based on the chaotic nature of how downtown was,” said Drummond.
“Very large crowds. Fights all over the place.”
He was on patrol downtown on Wyandotte Street when he saw a large crowd of people gathered around a brawl outside a bar.
He pulled over with his cruiser lights flashing and jumped out. He made it the length of his car before noticing a young man, strangely calm, moving toward him.
It was Dayvon Askew-kah. Normally mistrustful of police, he had never felt more relief than the moment he set eyes on Drummond.
“It was probably one of the brightest moments of my life,” said Askew-kah, 23.
He told the officer what had happened.
“A fight broke out between my friends, and I decided to join in,” he said. “When I did, one of the people that we were fighting against, he stabbed me multiples time in my back. One in my lower spine and one in my upper left lung.”
He took off his shirt to show his wounds. Drummond told Askewkah to lie on his stomach. The officer put pressure on the man’s wounds.
Drummond said he’s still astonished by how calm Askew-kah — who had lost so much blood he couldn’t feel his feet — remained with life-threatening injuries in the midst of an angry crowd.
“He was awake the whole time,” said Drummond. “I put some pressure. I put my fingers in the hole and did what I could to keep him alive. He stayed calm the whole time. He was even asking if he could text his mom. He was awesome through the whole thing, which I think helped save his own life.”
Drummond said the crowd seemed to think he was arresting Askew-kah, not trying to save him.
“That’s another thing that’s going to stick with me,” said Drummond.
“The amount of people that were around and how rowdy it was. I was alone that night, working by myself.”
A handful of other officers arrived shortly after. They tried to keep the crowd back so Drummond could tend to the injured man until paramedics arrived.
“The crowd was very large, so kudos to all the officers that were there helping keep the crowd back,” said Drummond.
“I did my best to focus on what I needed to do to help him. It wasn’t until after that I realized the depth of the situation.”
The situation was even more dire for Askew-kah.
“When I got to the hospital I was what they called bottom out,” said Askew-kah, now fully recovered. “I lost four pints of blood. And I needed four pints of blood to make it so that I was able to feel my feet. They said if I were to wait even a minute longer that I would have been dead.”
The two have kept in touch since that night.
“In my eyes, he’s a hero,” said Askew-kah. “He made it so I could go back and see my family and my daughter. Seeing him and being able to hang out with him from time to time means the world.”
His family even travelled to Ottawa for a ceremony where Drummond received another award.
“It’s special to know I can affect people in a positive way and to give Dayvon or other people he knows a sense that police officers are good people too,” said Drummond.