By Joe Jarosz
Northeast News
November 18, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Earlier this year, several Kansas City Police officers put their lives in danger to save a man who had jumped out of a window of a burning building.

Last week, the Kansas City Police Department honored those who displayed acts of bravery while in the line of duty. Officers Trent Finnell, Patrick Moss and Mark Wilson received Distinguished Service Medals at last week’s award ceremony.

According to the KCPD, Officer Mark Wilson saw smoke coming from the top floors of a three-story apartment building as he patrolled near Ninth and Cleveland Streets on Jan. 31, 2015. Wilson quickly asked dispatchers to send the fire department and additional officers as he went inside the building to evacuate residents. One of the tenants he helped evacuate told Wilson that people trapped by fire on the upper floors were jumping out of their windows in the back of the building, where the fire was at its heaviest. Wilson went back and found a man who was badly burned and injured from his jump, with debris and fire embers falling on him.

Finnell and Moss arrived soon after being called and joined Wilson to assist the victim. The three officers used their bodies to shield him from the falling embers and debris. They realized they needed to move the man so everyone would be safe from the rapidly burning building. With fire personnel busy fighting the fire, and ambulances had not yet arrived, Finnell got a backboard from a fire department supervisor, and with the help of a firefighter, the officers loaded the victim onto the backboard and carried him to find the arriving paramedics. The victim suffered from third-degree burns to 80 percent of his body and severe injuries from the jump. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

Also honored were the nearly 200 hundred officers and investigators who helped stop a shooter terrorizing drivers in south Kansas City in the spring of 2014. Dozens of awards went to members of the KCPD, ATF, FBI, Missouri State Highway Patrol and investigators from the Blue Springs, Grandview, Independence, Leawood and Lee’s Summit police departments for their efforts in identifying and stopping a man who is charged with shooting into more than a dozen moving vehicles. The suspect in that case is scheduled to go to trial in April 2016. Detective Brad Bailey also received the Purple Heart for severe injuries he sustained when his police vehicle was struck and overturned by a suspect fleeing police. Awards were also presented to officers who found homes and social services for homeless within the Metro Patrol Division, who identified and arrested a serial rapist and others.