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ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this May 30, 2012, photo, Officer Kevin Peck of the West Valley Police Department, is congratulated after receiving the Law Enforcement Humanitarian Award at an awards ceremony honoring Utah’s emergency responders at the Utah state Capitol, Salt Lake City. Peck was honored for calming and holding hands with a woman who was pinned underneath a UTA bus after getting hit while walking in a crosswalk in December 2011. The Deseret News reported that Peck helped save another crash victim while he was in Europe in November 2019.
SALT LAKE CITY >> A Salt Lake police officer can’t explain his habit of arriving at the right time, but there are now two crash victims who benefited from him being in the right place when they needed him.
In 2011, Officer Kevin Peck crawled under a crashed bus in Utah to hold a woman’s hand until she was rescued. Last month, he helped save another crash victim, this time while he was in Europe.
“That’s the whole reason I came into this job is to be able to do things like this,” Peck told the Deseret News.
Peck made headlines eight years ago when a photo captured him with his head under a bus in West Valley City clutching the hand of a woman who was pinned underneath. Peck, then with West Valley police, was lauded for the compassion he showed while he waited with the woman for emergency personnel.
In November, Peck and his wife were traveling from Germany to France when two cars in front of them collided on a one-lane road in a rural area. Peck used another traveler’s belt as a tourniquet on an injured woman’s leg, he said.
Despite a language barrier, Peck was “trying to communicate with (the victim) the best I can about what I’m going to do,” he said.
Rescue crews from the nearest city were not able to reach the scene for 10 to 15 minutes. Peck remained until local police completed their work, and the woman was transported to a hospital.
A doctor had one of the officers relay a message to Peck.
“He said, basically, his feeling was with her injury, the tourniquet probably slowed the bleeding down enough that it saved her life,” he said.
Peck had not considered the seriousness of the woman’s injury but was happy to receive the news.
“It’s always a rewarding feeling,” he said.
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