Oregon Campus Officer Honored for Saving Life

A quick-thinking officer at the University of Oregon Police Department has received a commendation from another police agency after pulling a man to safety last August.

Officer Adam Lillengreen, who patrols the university’s campus area, was presented the lifesaving award by the Eugene Police Department at the department’s annual awards ceremony — his second such award in seven years working in law enforcement, the Register-Guard reports.

Lillengreen, 33, was driving with a Eugene department officer in the early morning hours of Aug. 16 during a field training in the area of West Second Avenue and Taylor Street, when he saw a plume of smoke and began looking for the source.

After circling the neighborhood, he found a mattress in the bed of a truck on fire, with an unconscious man sleeping on it. Police said the fire was started by a cigarette.

Lillengreen got the man out of the pickup bed and “saved him from a likely death by smoke inhalation and burning,” authorities said.