Ofc. Canaan Powell Share

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On Mon­day, June 6^th, 2022, Mar­i­on Police Chief Angela Haley announced before the Board of Pub­lic Works and Safe­ty and a larg­er than usu­al audi­ence that she would like to give a spe­cial presentation. 

“It’s my priv­i­lege to be here before you today to not just to swear in five great new police offi­cers for the City of Mar­i­on, but also because we have a mer­it award to give out today, and that is to Offi­cer (Canaan) Powell.”

She then began to read a Sum­ma­ry of Coun­sel­ing from Sgt. Andy Bonneau.

“Offi­cer (Canaan) Pow­ell respond­ed to a self-inflict­ed gun­shot vic­tim that was suf­fer­ing from life-threat­en­ing bleed­ing. Offi­cer Pow­ell uti­lized his train­ing and equip­ment appro­pri­ate­ly, and applied the prop­er tourni­quet that was able to stop the bleeding.”

She stat­ed, ​“His sergeant believes that, that saved the person’s life. It appeared that he was suf­fer­ing from arte­r­i­al bleed­ing, and had the injury not been treat­ed, he like­ly would have died.”

Chief Haley con­clud­ed, ​“And so, today, we are pre­sent­ing Offi­cer Pow­ell with a mer­it pin in obser­vance of mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice in the line of duty with the Mar­i­on Police Depart­ment which was: Pro­vid­ing life-sav­ing assis­tance to an acci­den­tal shoot­ing vic­tim on May 16^th, 2022, at 615 S. Adams St., in Marion.”

Chief Haley then thanked and con­grat­u­lat­ed Offi­cer Pow­ell and pre­sent­ed him with the mer­it pin with his fam­i­ly stand­ing by his side. May­or Jess Alum­baugh per­son­al­ly con­grat­u­lat­ed Offi­cer Pow­ell along with each mem­ber of the Board of Works, fel­low offi­cers, and many oth­ers present.

Offi­cer Pow­ell is from Hunt­ing­ton, IN. He attend­ed Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty Ft. Wayne, then after work­ing for a time at Wal­mart, got to know police offi­cers and decid­ed he want­ed to become an offi­cer to help the com­mu­ni­ty. He joined MPD on Novem­ber 9^th, 2020.

May 16^th, 2022, was a true test of Pow­ell’s train­ing, and he said he was proud to have helped save a man’s life that day. Pow­ell reflect­ed, ​“He might not be here if I did not respond in the time that I did.”

Sgt. Andy Bon­neau said Ofc. Pow­ell did an excel­lent job, and the depart­ment plans to use the inci­dent as a teach­ing exam­ple. ​“Sgt. Wei­gle and I train the depart­ment at least once a year with med­ical emer­gen­cies like this, and Pow­ell did every­thing we train them to do. We plan on using this sit­u­a­tion and his body cam­era video for future training.”