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“My immediate reaction was to throw the man off and to get this girl the proper help she needed,” said Annett.

The culprit got away, but the group managed to intervene prior to what police say was an attempted sexual assault. They called authorities for help and stayed with the woman as they waited for police and an ambulance crew to show up.

Annett was shaken up by the event, which gave him a new understanding of the seriousness of sexual assault.

“A lot of the times, screams go unheard,” he said.

When police later phoned him to tell him he would be recognized for his efforts to help the woman, he was nervous seeing “Edmonton Police Service” on the call display. That emotion quickly turned to happiness.

“My entire life, I’ve been the kind of person who has flown under the radar,” Annet said. “To be publicly noticed for something this big, it was definitely an eye-opener, but it’s also a humbling experience.”

City police Det. Marci Koshowski nominated Annet and his friends.

“It’s very heroic,” Koshowski said. “You’re going to screaming in a forested area – you have no idea if there’s someone in there with a weapon. I thought it was very brave.”

She said the woman was pulled from a walking path and had been choked to the point of being unconscious. Had the Pokemon Go players not intervened, the woman would have been sexually assaulted, Koshowski said.

“A very bad situation was arising, and really without them, it’s my belief that this woman would have been sexually assaulted,” Koshowski said.

The case has gone cold, but Koshowski is confident police will eventually catch the man.

cgriwkowsky@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/CGriwkowsky