Three Akron residents, including a security officer, receive international recognition for bravery
Akron OH Dec 16 2020 Three local residents who rescued three children and their mother from an armed ex-boyfriend are getting international recognition and a $5,500 financial reward for their bravery.
Jason Aaron Strunk and Seth Robert Bond, and Leslie Shaffer are among the last 2020 recipients of the Carnegie Medal, an award bestowed upon people who selflessly “enter mortal danger while saving or attempting to save the lives of others.”
Heroes honored with the award, which is supported by an endowment created in 1904 by Pittsburgh industrialist Andrew Carnegie, have pulled elderly neighbors from burning homes, rescued crash victims trapped in vehicles before they explode, saved drowning children and more. The list of recipients in this final round of 2020 awards includes Wendy Winters, who died after picking up a pair of plastic bins and charging a gunman who entered her Maryland newsroom.
On June 16, 2019, three good Samaritans raced through a red light in the direction of gunfire in Akron.
Near a fire station in the heart of Akron’s Middlebury neighborhood, they found Tiffani Gray of Springfield Township crouching over her children as Akil Scott Jackson, a former boyfriend, shot the mother.
A security guard at the fire station, which was under construction, exchanged gunshots with Jackson. Strunk jumped out of his car and stood between the gunman and the children. Jackson reached around him to fire a second round into Gray’s back. With the gun pointed at Gray’s head, Strunk wrestled with Jackson, forcing the next gunshots into the ground before the gun jammed.
Strunk, a Jackson Township resident and group home supervisor in Canton, tossed two of the children into his car. Shaffer left her boyfriend, Bond, chasing Jackson down the street as she helped the mother and remaining child into her car and drove away.
The mother was treated at a hospital and released the next day. The children were not physically injured.
Bond, a Tallmadge resident, pursued Jackson, who was wielding a knife.
As police arrived, Jackson turned the gun on himself and fired a fatal shot to the heart, according to the Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Days after the incident, Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan held a ceremony honoring the heroic strangers, who said they would have done it all again.
Akron Beacon Herald
