Ashley Harkins

Ashley Harkins rescued a woman from falling, Old Lyme, Connecticut, November 27, 2023. A distressed woman in her early 60s had climbed a 10-foot-high safety fence next to the pedestrian walkway on the Baldwin Bridge and sat on a 9-inch-wide concrete ledge, clinging to the fence, overlooking the Connecticut River 80 feet below. Harkins, 37, an off-duty police sergeant whose shift had ended, nonetheless responded to a 911 call along with another sergeant. While the other sergeant talked to the shivering woman, Harkins scaled the fence beyond the woman’s view with no safety equipment or ropes and climbed down the other side to the narrow ledge. She maneuvered herself to a position directly behind the woman and placed both arms around her, gripping the fence and securing the woman to the fence with her body to keep her from falling. Harkins then helped the woman to place her foot onto Harkins’s thigh as Harkins grasped the fence with one hand. Harkins then pushed the woman up by her foot so she could climb up and over the fence to waiting officers. The woman was cold from exposure to wind and temperatures in the low 50s but was otherwise uninjured. She was taken to a hospital for an emergency mental-health evaluation. Harkins was not injured.