GRAVES COUNTY, Ky. (WYMT) – Above and beyond. That is what one Western Kentucky sheriff is calling the heroic efforts of an inmate trapped in a collapsed building destroyed during a deadly tornado late last year.
In a Facebook post, officials with the Graves County Sheriff’s Office announced they presented Marco Sanchez with their meritorious service award earlier this week.
On December 10th, 2021, Sanchez, who is an inmate at the Graves County RC Center, was working at the Mayfield candle factory on a work detail when the tornado hit.
In the aftermath of the building collapse, Sheriff Jon Hayden said he started hearing stories about how the inmate freed himself from the rubble and started pulling others out who were also trapped. A witness told officials Sanchez did all of that with a broken leg and cracked ribs. Officials later discovered several people had died in the section that the inmate managed to escape from.
After receiving treatment for his injuries and a cast, Sanchez found a state trooper at the hospital to tell him he was an inmate and needed to turn himself in. The trooper said with everything going on, he could not help him at that particular moment and told him to do the “right thing”.
Sanchez later found out the jail was also destroyed by the tornado, so he went to a storm shelter where he made contact with jail staff who took him into custody.
The sentencing judge in the case, McCracken Circuit Judge Tim Kaltenbach was told of Sanchez’s actions. Instead of taking the judge’s offer of early release and probation, the inmate decided since he only had days left on his sentence, we would do the “right thing” and serve it out. He is currently scheduled to be released on March 1st.
“Mr. Sanchez had a lot of decisions to make that night. He could have made the decision to only save himself, but he didn’t. His actions likely resulted in other lives being saved. The series of decisions he made over the next several hours were the right decisions and we applaud you for that sir,” the sheriff said.
You can read more about Sanchez’s actions and what he has done since then in the Facebook post below.
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