GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Several inmates inside a Gwinnett County jail are being credited with saving a life. Channel 2 Action News obtained video as they jumped into action.
The deputies at the jail are paid to protect and save lives. The inmates -- not so much.
But three inmates teamed up with a deputy and saved someone, and it may have had more of an impact on the rescuers than they realized.
Fred Huse has a long rap sheet, but he said it shouldn't always be a bad rap.
“Not everybody is. I mean, you are considered ‘bad,’ but everyone has a heart,” Huse said.
It’s that heart he said caused him and two other inmates to react quickly to save another inmate.
Just before 4 p.m., inmates were wrapping up a meal. A video surveillance camera recorded as an inmate walked out of his second-floor cell with a sheet wrapped around his neck.
He sat with his legs over an edge below a railing and then jumped.
TRENDING STORIES:
Other inmates reacted in seconds. One held him off the ground. Another ran upstairs to free him.
“It would have been really difficult for our deputy alone to save this inmate,” said Deputy Shannon Volkodav, with the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office.
At one point, the inmate tried to make another run for the upstairs, but Huse grabbed him, a move officials say saved the man’s life again.
“I mean, you got kids, he was a kid. I just did by instinct,” Huse said. “It made me think of my kids and how I wasn't there. It opened me up to a different view.”
It’s an impact Huse said will stay with him.
“We are really proud of the inmates that intervened,” Volkodav said. “They have no obligation to do so.”
Jail administrators gave Huse a bin full of items from the commissary, thanking him for his actions.
“It's just a blessing. Everybody did what they did,” Huse said.
Cox Media Group
