Prince George’s County police began a regular meeting of leadership Thursday with a ceremony honoring the members of the Special Operations Marine and Aviation units who responded to the deadly midair crash over the Potomac River in January.
It was an event many were reluctant to say too much about, but those who did speak talked about setting aside their emotions to help the families of those about to face the most devastating news they could ever imagine.
“In our eyes, we thought we’d be helping victims of this crash out of the water — getting them aboard our vessels and getting them to safety,” said Lt. Charles Perry, commander of the National Harbor Unit and the Marine Unit. “When we arrived we were informed there were most likely no survivors.”
He said that was gut wrenching.
Cpl. Jeramie Jordan said the overwhelming smell of the jet fuel in water as his boat approached the wreckage made clear that what he was about to see wasn’t going to be pretty. He wasn’t the only one to say that, either.
“I had to suppress my emotions because I had a job to do,” Jordan said. “It was 14 hours later when I was driving home that it really impacted me. Then to come home to my family and embrace my kids and my wife and to know some families weren’t going to have that opportunity that night. That’s when it really hit me.”
He would be back out there the next day, and for weeks to help clean up.
“Seeing the mangled aircraft in the water … absolutely surreal,” Capt. Manzur Ahmed said when describing the scene. “Nobody could imagine, I couldn’t imagine seeing that in the water. And understanding there were victims in the water.”
Perry added, “We never felt the cold. We never felt the wet. We never said very much to each other.”
But once officers left the scene, the department made it a priority to offer mental health services to those who responded.
“The mental health of our officers is absolutely important,” Ahmed said.
That’s meant speaking with mental health professionals in the immediate aftermath of the response, but also in the weeks after the collision.
“Be human about it,” is how he described it. “The things they saw out there — these are things that you’re not ever going to be able to forget. But we have to try to provide the resources to allow for them to cope with the past memories so that it doesn’t haunt them in the future.”
Chief Malik Aziz called it an honor to stand on the stage with those officers.
“They don’t think about themselves. It takes an act of courage, and courage is just ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” Aziz said. “And we call them heroes. Because they display the honor and the courage, the commitment and integrity to move us forward.”
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