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Sheriff awards Lifesaving Award to 9 year old

Lead Summary
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By
Mavis Fodness

In a special ceremony June 2 on the lawn of the Rock County Courthouse in Luverne, Rock County officials presented a Lifesaving Award to Briella John of rural Kenneth.
“Heroes do not always wear capes, they can come in the form of a 9-year-old girl named Briella,” said Rock County Sheriff Evan Verbrugge.
John was joined by family members including her parents, Kenneth and Cerrisa Heath, and the Rock County Commissioners.
Mom Cerrisa Heath admits that without Briella’s help the outcome of the May 3 incident may not have been as positive.
“I was bucked off one of my horses, knocked unconscious with serious injuries,” she said. “When I woke up, Briella told me she was going to get her dad.”
The soon-to-be fourth-grader at Luverne Elementary School said her mother gained consciousness in a matter of minutes but was in a lot of pain. A cellphone, normally in Cerrisa’s back pocket, was nowhere to be found.
Instead of riding on the gravel roads, the mother and daughter had decided to ride along an unfamiliar waterway in the newly disked field north of their rural Kenneth acreage.
Without a phone to call for help, Briella told her mom she would ride back home to get her stepdad.
She calmly removed her jacket and wrapped it around her mother before getting back on her horse for the ride back nearly a mile away.
Briella noticed that the early evening air was becoming chilly as she prepared to leave her mom to get help.
“She was getting cold and it was getting windy out,” Briella said.
Lying flat on her back, Cerissa was difficult to see in the field of rolling hills.
However, Briella retraced her steps to bring help to her mom. This included her stepdad, Rock County sheriff’s deputies, and medical personnel with the Edgerton Fire Department and Pipestone County ambulance.
Cerrisa spent five days in a Sioux Falls hospital with multiple rib fractures, and doctors drained a liter of blood from a tube inserted in her chest.
Cerrisa said she remembers very little from the ordeal except that she was in extreme pain.
A month after the incident, she’s recovered and is looking forward to riding again.
She says she has her 9-year-old daughter to thank for the return to an activity the family enjoys.
“Without her help, things could have been a lot different,” Cerrisa said, noting that her daughter didn’t think it was worthy of an award.
Rock County Sheriff Evan Verbrugge immediately agreed that Briella’s actions did help her mom.
“When a family member called me to say that Briella was having concerns on whether she did the right thing, it made me think, ‘Does this deserve a Lifesaving Award?’ and I believe it does,” he said.
The certificate presented to Briella is the first in Rock County to be presented to a civilian.
The award is typically presented annually through the Minnesota Sheriffs Association to law enforcement officials who save a life.
“We have given out several to deputies but never to a civilian,” Verbrugge said.

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