Contact: Sammy McDavid
Four Mississippi State University students in the College of Forest Resources are being honored this week for separate acts of off-campus heroism.
They will be recognized during a public program being organized Friday [Feb. 8] by college officials. The ceremony begins at 3:00 p.m. in the Tully Auditorium of Thompson Hall.
Seniors Blake Hamilton, a forestry major from Theodore, Ala., and Jonathan Ball of Columbia, a wildlife and fisheries major, were witnesses to a Jan. 8 head-on collision in Macon in which a passenger was thrown from the vehicle.
Hamilton, who had received CPR and first-aid training during an MSU forestry summer field program, found the victim to be choking. After rolling the man on his side, Hamilton provided comfort until medical assistance arrived.
Ball telephoned the local 911 emergency line and comforted a second individual who was pinned in a vehicle at the Noxubee County location.
In a separate incident three days earlier in Panola County, forestry freshman Daniel Sanford and Mason Conley, a wildlife and fisheries sophomore, assisted two hunters in distress. The Sardis residents came to the aid of a man and his son who had been waterfowl hunting on a body of water when their boat hit a stump and began sinking.
Conley jumped into the cold water, rescued the drowning hunter and pulled him to shore. Sanford telephoned the local U.S. Army Corp of Engineers office for assistance and then drove the father and son to an area where they could be airlifted to a medical center.
All of the victims survived their life-threatening encounters.
Ball is the son of Bobby and Lula Ball; Conley, the son of Decker and Angie Conley; Hamilton, the son of Karen Hamilton; and Sanford, the son of Jerry and Glenda Sanford.
For additional information on the ceremony, contact Karen Brasher at 662-325-8530.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.