Excerpts from the DailyHerald.com:

Elgin Firefighter Shay Brill was awarded a medal of merit for pulling over while off-duty to help a Cook County sheriff’s deputy hit by a drunken driver on Interstate 90.

He was driving alone on Interstate 90 near Arlington Heights Road when he saw a car zip past him on the right, cross over all three lanes of traffic and crash into two squad cars stopped by the median. The deputies had finished pulling over another driver, who had just left. He says he didn’t do much other than divert traffic, feel the officer’s pulse, and talk to him to try to calm him down. The officer, who had to be extricated from his totaled vehicle, suffered two broken ribs, a concussion, and head lacerations. 

Earlier in the evening, Brill’s kids were injured when the vehicle driven by his daughter rolled over three times after a gust of wind blew it off the road near Hampshire. Brill and his wife rushed to the scene, arriving at the same time as paramedics, and finding their daughter unconscious and their son with a fractured femur and tibia. He helped put his daughter on a board and do a quick trauma assessment. Both kids were transported to Sherman Hospital, where doctors decided the girl should be moved to Lutheran General Hospital.

Tags: Elgin Fire Department, Elgin Firefighter Shay Brill, Firefighter awarded for aiding others while off-duty