A middle-aged man wearing a prison jumpsuit with vertical gray and white stripes, standing in front of tombstones at a cemetery. The setting includes flowers on the tombstones, green grass, and daylight illuminating the scene. 2:52
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When their guard fell, six inmates saved him

Six inmates were cutting grass and touching up graves in a Polk County, Georgia, cemetery for Father's Day when the officer watching them started to feel unwell. more

Inmates don't often make the evening news for saving a lawman. These six did. 11Alive news introduced them as Georgia inmates making headlines "this time for saving a deputy's life."

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That night the headlines were about six inmates who saved the deputy guarding them.

It came out of nowhere, one of the men says. "Every day we work with him and he seems fine." That day the officer told them he didn't feel well, and he even told them where his phone was in case something happened.

Something did. "I happened to look up and I seen the officer going to his knees," one of the men says. He was one of the ones who ran back and got somebody else. The officer was face down and breathing hard, so they went to him and rolled him over.

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One of the six tells how he looked up and saw the officer drop to his knees.

What followed were split-second choices. First they took off his gun belt and laid it to the side, then pulled his vest apart and took it off in case he needed CPR. They found his phone in his pocket and dialed 911. He was out for about a minute and barely breathing, and then his breath came back, heavy and fast.

The gun belt, the phones and the county van were all within the men's reach. Nobody ran. They wear stripes and he wears a badge, but the sheriff says they "really stepped up in a time of crisis and showed that they care about my officers."

A middle-aged man wearing a prison jumpsuit with vertical gray and white stripes, standing in front of tombstones at a cemetery. The setting includes flowers on the tombstones, green grass, and daylight illuminating the scene. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Six inmates were cutting grass and touching up graves in a Polk County, Georgia, cemetery for Father's Day when the officer watching them started to feel unwell.

One of the men puts it plainly. "It wasn't about who was in jail, who wasn't," he says. "We had to help him."

The week before had shown the other side. In Putnam County, investigators say, two inmates overpowered and killed two officers on a prison bus, and the manhunt that followed ended in Tennessee.

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The week before, two officers were killed on a prison bus in Putnam County, Georgia.

The officer will be okay. The sheriff says he has been taken off the work detail because, quite frankly, the temperatures are just way too hot. Anything could have happened in that cemetery, and all the right things did.

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