Published July 01, 2009 06:08 am - A 12-year-old Maryland boy who died trying to rescue his younger brother from an icy pond is one of 22 people awarded Carnegie medals for heroism.
Carnegie Heroes Fund honors 22 with medals, money
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A 12-year-old Maryland boy who died trying to rescue his younger brother from an icy pond is one of 22 people awarded Carnegie medals for heroism.
Aaron Robinson, of Cambridge, Md., fell through ice and drowned attempting to rescue his 8-year-old brother, Jairus, on Feb. 11, 2007. Jairus Robinson also died.
Three other people honored Wednesday by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission died trying to rescue people. They are 27-year-old R. Jason Altman, of Andrews, S.C.; 27-year-old Randall Scott Brewer, of Lancaster, N.H.; and 41-year-old Paul Cossalter of Wrenshall, Minn.
Pittsburgh steel baron Andrew Carnegie started the fund in 1904 after hearing rescue stories from a mine disaster that killed 181 people. Since then, $31.5 million has been awarded to 9,284 people. Medalists, or their heirs, receive $6,000.
Recipients of Carnegie Hero medals
— Terry Ray Odom, 49, of Naples, Fla.,
And
— Richard S. Cameron, 36, of Naples, Fla., saved Ray J. Davis, 55, from drowning when his sport utility vehicle crashed into a golf course lake in East Naples, Fla. on July 3, 2008.
— Thomas Eugene Foust, 17, of Glenview, Ill., saved an 83-year-old woman he pulled from a car stuck on railroad tracks seconds before it was hit by a train on Sept. 8, 2007.
— Frederick L. Visconti, 65, of Danbury, Conn., saved a neighbor, Robert J. Mitchell, 18, from his burning home on May 24, 2008.
— Edwin Hernandez, 31, of Reading, Pa., saved a 65-year-old woman who was being attacked in her home by her son, blocking the assailant as he tried to stab the woman with an 18-inch shard of glass on April 18, 2008.
— Edward Bohan, 31, of Franklin Square, N.Y., rescued John H. Collymore, 58, by pulling him from a sport utility vehicle that had crashed and caught fire in North Hempstead, N.Y. on July 1, 2008.
— R. Jason Altman, 27, of Andrews, S.C., died while helping to save Keith E. Gibson, 39, from suffocating after Gibson lost consciousness in oxygen-deficient air in a chemical dryer Gibson was cleaning in a plant where he worked on Nov. 4, 2006;
And