Todd D. Lyford, formerly of the Dover-Foxcroft Police Department in Maine, was presented the Carnegie Medal Dec. 12, 2019, at an annual Christmas banquet organized by his new employer, the Piscataquis County (Maine) Sheriff’s Office.
Maine Sen. Paul Davis, right, who served 23 years as a Maine state trooper, presented Lyford with his medal for saving a 65-year-old woman from a burning vehicle after an accident in Dover-Foxcroft on July 30, 2018. The woman’s vehicle left a roadway, traveled down a steep, wooden embankment, and came to rest against a tree trunk with its front end, burning, several feet off the ground.
Lyford, then 54, was on duty. Arriving before firefighters, he emptied a fire extinguisher on the flames, then opened the front, passenger door, grasped the woman’s upper body, and pulled her to the ground. Lyford and others dragged her up the embankment; she later died from injuries suffered in the crash. Lyford was treated for inhaling extinguisher chemicals.
Davis represents Maine’s fourth district.