None had water rescue training, 2nd Precinct cops pull woman from river

Early morning walkers near Nicollet Island could hear a woman screaming from the direction of the Mississippi River. They called 911.

Minneapolis Police Officer Noukue Cha was the first to arrive, soon followed by several other Precinct 2 officers at the river bank. Out in the water, about 25 feet from shore, a woman was stranded in the water near a railroad bridge. She had no way to get to shore. She had been there for three hours.

At 6 in the morning, the sun was just rising. “It was fortunate she was wearing red, so we could spot her right away,” Cha said.

“The call indicated that there was a woman screaming for help,” Cha said. “You never know what that’s going to be.”

The Northeast Minneapolis policemen faced a dilemma on that Friday, May 3, morning. They were not trained in water rescue, nor did they have any rescue gear. The officers tried to reach the woman by way of the railroad bridge, but the gate was locked.

“Tim (Officer Timothy Thao) knew I could swim and so told me to just jump in and swim out to her,” Cha said.

“I don’t swim,” said Thao.

“But we decided that was a bad idea,” Officer Kyle Andreasen said. “It’s a river and it has undertow and currents. We didn’t need two people to rescue.”

The woman looked as if she was reaching a point of hypothermia. Her skin was pale and her lips were blue. “We could tell that she needed urgent care immediately,” Andreasen said.

“We just tried to keep her talking,” said Officer Nathan Norgren. “She was able to do that. She said she had a medical condition, stiff body syndrome. She said she was so cold that it stung.”

The woman, who was identified in the police report as Christine Kucaba, 42, told the officers how she had gone down to the river at about 3 in the morning because the moving water soothed her. She climbed out on a branch and was enjoying the view when the branch snapped and suddenly she was battling the current in the river, being swept downstream. She was able to halt her trip down the river at the railroad bridge, but was unable to get to shore.

Officer Cha raced back up the steep bank, looking for a rope. He checked the trunks of the squad cars, but no luck. He looked through several dumpsters for something to help.

“Then these passersby came along right then and I asked if they had a rope. They had a dog leash, but it was fairly long,” Cha said. “We looked around for a piece of wood that was big enough.

“Now, I’m not a football player so my throwing wasn’t that great,” he said. They tied the leash to a branch about two feet long and two inches thick. The other part of the equation was to get the rope and wood close to the victim, but not hit her with the wood.

It took four tries, but finally the small log with the rope attached landed right in front of the woman and she grabbed it.

“We told her to hold on to the rope where it was tied. We know that with hypothermia the extremities are the first to go, so we knew she might have trouble holding the rope. But when we pulled on the rope, there was tension, and so we knew she had grabbed it.”

It was a slow process, hauling the woman across the open water foot by foot, but they finally got her to shore. About this time a Minneapolis Fire Department rescuer showed up wearing a wet suit and joined in the group effort.

The next problem was to get the woman the final few feet to the steep, muddy bank. To do this, the officers formed a human chain, grabbing each others’ belt buckles as they brought the woman ashore.

Norgren said he was holding two of his companions by their belts and had his leg around a tree. “I was screaming because it hurt so much.”

An ambulance had arrived by this time and two paramedics joined in the effort.

“But the bank was way too steep,” Thao said. “We couldn’t bring her up right there, we had to work our way down the shoreline”

The first obstacle was a large tree on the waterline. It took a major effort by all the rescuers to get her around the tree, while standing in the water.

Next, it was 20 yards along the shoreline to an area where the bank was little more level. Slowly, they helped the woman along, step by step until they reached a possible rescue point. Once there, she collapsed on the ground, and the officers wrapped her in blankets.

A rescue boat had arrived by this time but couldn’t get past the railroad bridge. “We just said forget the boat, we’ll walk her up.” The paramedics had a metal stretcher, sort of like a cage, and the officers got the woman into the device and tied her down.

Now it was all hands on deck to get the litter up the 45-degree bank. Again, the officers formed a human chain with belts used to keep everybody upright. “That was a journey,” Andreasen said.

“We kept her talking the whole time,” Norgren said. “She was definitely feeling the effects of the ordeal.” Cha said, “She was completely exhausted. But at one point she cracked a smile, so we knew she was hanging in there.”

About halfway up, the officers and medics were able to set up a rigging system to haul the litter. “It was so muddy, it was like walking on butter,” Andreason said.

The crew was able to get the woman into the ambulance and watch it head off to the hospital. The whole process had taken about 30 minutes. Officer James Kelley rode with Kucaba to the Hennepin County Medical Center and stayed with her until the doctors told him she was stable.

“We didn’t have any rescue equipment, only a dog rope. It was just a few cops and a dream,” Andreasen said.

The officers were mostly silent when asked what it was like to save a life. “That’s the way it goes. Just another day on the job,” Cha said. “We’re not trained to do water rescue, so that part was super nice. You just adapt, overcome and do it.”

“We do this every day,” Thao said.

“I thought it was cool working with the Fire Department and medics,” Andreasen said. “Every piece was needed. We just do our best to make a difference. You have to keep your mind open to see what will work. It was awesome.”

“Luckily, we had our best people on it,” said Minneapolis Police Public Information Officer Garret Parten, who sat in on the interview.

Norgren said credit should also go to the anonymous people who called it in on 911.  “They could have heard that woman screaming and just said, ‘Well, it’s just another day in Minneapolis’ and kept walking. But they didn’t.”

(After this interview was completed, it was learned that Christine Kucaba died five days after the rescue, though a source who knew her told the Northeaster that it was not related to the water rescue. According to the Star Tribune obituary, a memorial service will be held later in the year to celebrate her life.)