Three members of the Fairfax County (Virginia) police department’s helicopter unit are the winners of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association’s 2013 Gus Crawford Air Crew of the Year Award for their rescue of two small lost boys last January. The award was presented at the association’s annual convention in late July.
On the afternoon of January 25, crewmembers Tim Schilling, Paul DeHaven and pilot Garrett Wymer were called in by a neighboring sheriff’s department to assist in the search for the boys, aged five and 10, fifty miles away in dense woods near Spotsylvania, Va., as snow rolled in and temperatures fell into the 20s. After searching for 45 minutes and running out of daylight and low on fuel, the crew located the boys sheltering under a log with their Bell 429’s infrared camera and then were able to direct ground searchers to their location. “We had to worry about not only fuel but also incoming weather,” Schilling said.
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