Chris Arkell Employer:
Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Department
Years of service:
4
Favorite part of job: “Traffic enforcement is more my way of reaching out to the public. I’m more about education than writing tickets.”
Heavy situations By Brian Arola
It’s a good thing Chris Arkell is so tall. The Blue Earth County Sheriff’s deputy needed every inch of his 6’3 frame while responding to a call from a man threatening to commit suicide in September 2016. Arriving on scene, Arkell remembered feeling wary. Details from the caller at the Southhaven mobile home park south of Mankato were vague, leading Arkell and his fellow officer to suspect something else was up — recent police ambushes elsewhere in the country were fresh in their minds. Inspecting the property, it was Arkell’s fellow officer, Kelly Wood from the Mankato Police Department, who first saw the man standing in a tree in the backyard. By the time she called for Arkell, the man was already swinging. The clock was ticking. Arkell and Wood rushed forward, knowing the pressure pushing down on the man’s neck had to
be relieved. Arkell, his stature paying off, bear hugged the man just below the knees and pushed up. Wood tried to climb the tree to cut the man down, but mucky ground complicated both their efforts. Arkell remembered feeling like he wasn’t getting enough of an upward push, like gravity was doing what it does best. “The scariest thing for me was when I was holding him up was I could feel him convulsing in my hands,” he said. The clock kept ticking. As more back up arrived, Arkell braced the man against a tree limb while two others held him there. Arkell then helped his fellow first responder up into the tree, handing her his knife to cut the man down. Finally, the rope snapped, leading to tense moments until the officers realized the man was breathing. He’d been saved. All in a hard day’s work, right? Time Time to celebrate? Nope. “You get the adrenaline dump,
like it’s over, but of course that was the first part of my shift so I had still another nine hours to go,” Arkell said. Arkell had just started at the sheriff’s office about a month before the Southhaven incident. He previously worked with Mankato PD for about three years. He said episodes like the attempted suicide stand out, but the job requires moving on to the next call. “I don’t want to sound like an old salty veteran and it’s not a big deal,” he said. “It still affected me. “I don’t want to say it’s something you see and get over, but we have to in law enforcement.” Arkell said he’s arrived at tragic scenes where there was nothing he could do. Southhaven was the opposite. He prefers that. “There’s a mentality that they were trying to hang themselves and that’s their decision, but that person needs help,” he said. “I’d rather they get mental health (help) and live a longer life.” MANKATO MAGAZINE • April 2017 • 23