University of Minnesota men’s rowing head coach Aaron Schnell drives a motor boat along the Mississippi River every day during practice season.
Usually, it’s not to help police with a rescue.
Schnell received a citizen’s award from the university Police Department on Wednesday for helping save a 23-year-old man who, according to a police report, jumped from the Washington Avenue Bridge on the afternoon of July 7.
“I was just walking between the dock and the boathouse, and the police car came flying up,” Schnell said.
At the officer’s request, he quickly snagged the motor boat keys, started the engine and steered into the river. He drove the boat, with the life-vest-wearing officer on board, about 100 yards upstream from the bridge.
The man dipped below the water’s surface twice before the officer — taking tips on the man’s location from police stationed along the river — tossed him a flotation device.
Schnell steered the boat back to the dock, and the man was transported to the hospital and survived.
“The police were kind of giving me these attaboys, like ‘Way to help, look what you did,’ and I was just sitting there thinking, ‘I just drove the boat for the them,’ ” Schnell said.
He’s heard sirens roar along East River Road near Arlington street before when emergency personnel are searching for people who have drowned.
“When you’re down there a lot you kind of get numb to it because it’s just another body,” he said. “It kind of felt good to be helping the police actually save someone.”
Though university police don’t encourage bystander involvement, sometimes citizens lend a helping hand, University Police Chief Matt Clark said at the award ceremony Wednesday.
“We take care of each other. We take care of our students that we work with, the students take care of us, and really, that adds to the learning environment but also the community we have at the university,” Clark said.
But Schnell said he doesn’t feel like a hero at all.
“That was the police officers,” he said.
Jessie Bekker is a University of Minnesota student on assignment for the Star Tribune.
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