Montana Deputy awarded Medal of Valor

Only a fraction of us will ever be forced to make split-second decisions that determine the life or death of a stranger.

EMTs, firefighters, soldiers, police officers. There are a small handful of professions whose members are trained and expected to make these decisions — even if only in rare occasions. The choices these professionals make can have life-altering implications, for both people involved.

On Dec. 31, one Pondera County sheriff's deputy was awarded the department's Medal of Valor for his decisive, split-second actions. Unexpectedly faced with a knife-wielding man, Deputy Kyle Lucas seized the weapon, pinned the suspect to the ground and held him there until help arrived.

Alone and several miles from help, Lucas disarmed the distraught man without ever drawing his gun. It is likely his actions saved the man's life.

'I'm not going to jail'

Dec. 6 had been a pretty unremarkable day at the Pondera County Sheriff's Office. Lucas, 31, was the department's newest deputy, having been hired on as a transfer from the Conrad Police Department one month earlier.

Lucas drew the night shift that Saturday. It was getting close to midnight — just about time for him to head home, when Lucas got a call asking for help locating a vehicle believed to be somewhere in northern Pondera County

Despite the late hour, Lucas set off in a sheriff's office vehicle to answer the call. A short time later, word came back that the deputy's help was no longer needed. Lucas turned the SUV around and started back down Interstate 15 toward Conrad.

"As I was heading home on I-15, I noticed a vehicle in the northbound lane with its emergency flashers on," Lucas recalled.

The van was stopped on the shoulder of the opposite lane, not far from the Valier exit. As Lucas' SUV approached, the unseen driver flashed his headlights. Lucas assumed the driver was signaling for help. He turned his rig around at the next interstate crossing and headed back to see what the problem was.

"I just assumed they were broken down," Lucas said. "I was going to make contact with them to see if they needed a ride home, or to get a tow truck out there so he wasn't stranded on the side of the road all night. I was just checking on their well-being."

Lucas pulled up behind the immobile vehicle and got out to check on the driver. Inside he found a man in his late 50s, who appeared sluggish and confused.

"He was extremely intoxicated," Lucas said. "He was saying he couldn't figure out how to operate his headlights. I asked him for his identification and he didn't provide it, so I asked him to step out of the vehicle."

After the man stepped out onto pavement, he looked up at Lucas and said "I'm not going to jail." The man pulled out an 8-inch-long knife and thrust the fixed, stiletto blade up into the fleshy part of his own neck, just below his chin.

In the span of a few minutes the situation had flipped from helping a stranded motorist to confronting a desperate, armed man who was determined not to go to jail — even if it came at the cost of his own life.

7 miles from backup

Lucas grew up in a small town in Maine. In his early 20s he enlisted in the Air Force, and was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Lucas worked at the fire department there for the next four years.

Lucas got married to a Montana girl who grew up in Deer Lodge. After his honorable discharge, he enrolled in the Montana Law Enforcement Academy, eventually taking a job with the Conrad Police Department.

Lucas' years of first-responder training would serve him well.

The bleeding motorist still had the knife in his hands and showed no sign of willingly delivering himself to Lucas' control.

"I lunged at him and took control of the knife," Lucas said. "I was basically trying to get the knife away from him and keep him from stabbing himself again. He was trying to get away from me and keep a hold of the knife."

The two men struggled at the edge of the roadway. Ever aware of the threat that a passing car or truck could run into them, Lucas forced the man back toward the space between their two parked vehicles. He was able to gain control of the knife and throw it to the side of the road. Lucas then forced the man to the ground and pinned him there.

He called the Conrad dispatch office for backup, but could not loosen his hold on the still struggling man long enough to reach his handcuffs. Help was roughly seven miles away.

"I'm on his back, he's on his stomach," Lucas described. "I just kept talking to him. I was trying to de-escalate the situation as well as make a connection with him — figure out what was going through his head. We just had a discussion. He just said he didn't want to go back to jail because he had been in jail multiple times before."

Unbeknownst to Lucas, the antennae on his portable radio was broken. The message came across garbled and tinny. All the dispatcher could decipher was the word "knife." On-duty Conrad police officer Chad Strong raced toward Lucas' broadcast signal. Other officers were only a short distance behind.

"It felt like forever," Lucas said. "but it was probably just a few minutes."

By the time help arrived, the worst of the situation had been resolved. Lucas was successful in making a human connection with the man pinned to the ground. He was calm and compliant. The fight was out of him.

If the two men hadn't made what could be called a friendship, they had at least developed a level of respect for each another. The suspect even complimented Lucas, telling Sheriff Carl Suta how professional his new deputy had been.

The suspect was identified as Edward Boggs, who was wanted in Cascade County on a parole violation.

"The guy was a severe alcoholic," Suta said of Boggs. "He'd been drinking 33 days straight, and was so afraid of going back to jail because he'd have to go through detox. He told us, 'You just can't imagine what it's like. I just can't go to jail. I can't go through it.'"

Both Suta and Lucas said they felt compassion for Boggs, a man who in the end posed a bigger threat to himself than to those around him.

"He actually turned out to be a pretty nice guy," Suta said.

However, Suta saved his highest praise for Lucas' cool-headed response, especially in light of the sudden unexpected confrontation at the edge of the interstate.

"To get thrown a curve-ball like that and not overreact, that's something you can't be trained to do," Suta said. "You've got to be born with that. For Kyle to make common-sense decisions when he didn't have a second to think — it doesn't get any better than that."

For his own part, Lucas said he didn't expect to receive any special recognition for his actions. He was just doing his job.

"You always wonder if you did the right thing," he said. "Given the results of what happened — he's alive, I'm alive and neither one of us are really hurt — it came to the best outcome."