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Sergeant Eurisa Warfield
Greg Walker, Esq., ARM, CPP

On the evening of November 11, 2007, North Patrol officers responded to an incident in which a woman pointed a firearm at a hotel employee and then retreated into her hotel room. The responding officers could see the emotionally distressed woman through the open door, standing with a gun to her head. When she went into the bathroom and closed the door, the officers backed away and called for a sergeant.

Sergeant Eurisa Warfield was on her first day of the Sergeant’s Field Training Program and volunteered to check by on the barricaded woman call. Upon her arrival at the hotel, Sergeant Warfield, with the assistance of her Field Training Sergeant, stabilized the scene and attempted to establish communication with the woman who was crying uncontrollably. After several failed attempts to communicate with her, an officer’s cellular telephone was tossed into the room. Sergeant Warfield then called the telephone number while another officer used his public address system to tell the woman to answer it. Several minutes passed before the distraught woman, with the gun pressed into her neck, left the bathroom and retrieved the telephone.

Over the next ninety minutes, Sergeant Warfield, exhibited great patience, compassion, tactfulness, and resourcefulness, and was able to calm the woman, establish a rapport with her, and eventually convince her to surrender peacefully. Without the extraordinary efforts of Sergeant Warfield, the woman would have most likely taken her own life. A follow-up search of the hotel room produced an organ donor card obtained on the date of the incident, which confirmed the woman’s intentions.