(The Idaho Statesman published the following story by Patrick Orr on its website on August 8.)
MERIDIAN , Idaho — When Idaho State Police Cpl. C. Dwayne Prescott jumped on and stopped a runaway locomotive before it could cause an accident, he didn’t count on becoming a media star.
That act of bravery earned Prescott the ISP’s Silver Star award Wednesday — the second-highest honor for bravery in the face of danger a trooper can earn. It also brought another round of media attention.
“I’m kind of shy, but all this attention seems kind of silly when you consider there are officers all over the country in all kinds of situations like this 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Prescott said after he received the award.
Since Prescott stopped the locomotive in the Nampa area June 5, he has been contacted by CBS News and other national media organizations, including one which wanted to broadcast Wednesday?s ceremony live.
Prescott respectfully declined the requests. But he seemed to enjoy the handshakes and backslaps from his fellow ISP officers Wednesday.
“I just don’t know about all this attention,” he said. “Any of the guys would have done it. ”
Prescott was surrounded by several of his motorcycle officer colleagues, other ISP employees and his proud parents at the ISP’s Meridian headquarters.
Mary Prescott, Dwayne’s mom, said she wasn’t surprised to hear about her son’s action-hero moves to get on the locomotive.
“That is just something he would do,” she said.
ISP spokesman Rick Ohnsman said Prescott?s Silver Star is the eighth to be issued since the ISP program began in the early 1990s.
On June 5, Prescott jumped onto an unmanned locomotive, stopped it and reversed it to keep the engine from causing an accident as it traveled through intersections.
The 22-year ISP veteran didn?t know the locomotive, which had rolled about 22 miles at speeds up to 40 mph, was on a collision course with a parked train on the same track in a downtown Nampa railyard. The locomotive somehow detached from the end of an Idaho Northern & Pacific Railroad train near Boise, east of Eagle Road, at about 12:40 p.m. June 5.
The 400,000-pound locomotive began rolling west toward Nampa, propelled by gravity, said David Crutcher, an operating practices inspector with the Federal Railroad Administration.
Boise, Nampa and Meridian police and Canyon and Ada counties sheriffs personnel helped block intersections as the engine rolled past. Prescott first tried to get on the locomotive near Can-Ada Road, but the train was moving too fast at about 20 mph.
He rode his motorcycle to the 11th Avenue Extension crossing in Nampa, where the tracks head uphill and the engine slowed to about 5 to 10 mph. He got off his bike, ran beside the locomotive and climbed aboard.
Once inside he started pulling levers and eventually found one marked “reverse. ”
The locomotive stopped and started to go backward, according to reports.
Two railroad employees jumped onto the engine while others placed a railroad tie on the tracks, which eventually stopped the locomotive just west of the busy 11th Avenue crossing.