Officer Keith Krallman of the Newport Beach police was recognized Tuesday for saving the life of a suicidal man as well as interceding while off-duty when a man punched and choked his girlfriend.
Krallman received two of the awards handed out at the 39th annual Police Appreciation Breakfast at the Newport Beach Balboa Bay Club.
Along with Officer Kristen O'Donnell, Krallman received a Lifesaving Award for talking down a man who was straddling the edge of the top of a parking structure at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian and threatening to jump. The two officers took an hour and a half to talk the man into putting away a knife, taking off a rope he had put around his neck and tied to a car, and stepping aweay from the edge.
Krallman also received an Award of Merit for helping out the woman who had been assaulted by her boyfriend.
Some two dozen officers and support personnel in all received awards, including Officer of the year Tracy McKenzie.
Officer Sam Sa, an Iraq war veteran and taekwondo champion, was given an award of merit for his heads-up arrest of Jose Guillermo Hernandez Luna, now 24, of Santa Ana, after a routine car stop.
Sa noticed Hernandez was carrying an Orange County Register article about a shoot-out during an ATM robbery and suspected that Hernandez' interest in the article was other than literary.
Hernandez was charged with the robbery and several car thefts and pleaded not guilty earlier this month.
Six officers involved in the arrest and conviction of "dinnertime bandit" Paul Keesling were honored. Keesling was convicted last month of a third strike for a $250,000, and was the suspect in a string of burglaies with losses totaling more than $12 million.
Officers Jennifer Allen and Adam Gilbert were honored for performing CPR on a restaurant patron, as was Officer Jeff Perkins for using a belt as a tourniquet to keep a man from bleeding to death.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/officers-241035-krallman-received.html
