Facing fire, weapons going off like fireworks, four earn Medals of Valor in Sheriff’s Department
HARLAN — The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office was not unfamiliar with a house belonging to Nelson Guyer in Elk Horn. They had been there before for other issues. But this time was different. This time, Guyer took steps to harm himself and threatened to blow up the house.
On July 12, 2021, Sheriff Neil Gross was the first to respond to the home. For their actions that day, Gross, along with Deputy Jake Hoss, Chief Deputy Cody Eckles, and Deputy Bill McDaniel, were awarded the Medal Of Valor from the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office and Sgt. Chad Butler on Feb. 21.
“I smelled the odor of gasoline,” Gross said. “Nelson was standing in the window waving a lighter, so I backed up a little bit and tried to get him to answer his cell phone to talk. We ended up just kind of holding our position off a little bit and we got a few more guys there.”
Gross said he got a negotiator, and they finally made contact with Guyer.
“He had said he screwed the door shut from the inside. He wasn’t coming out,” Gross said. “We heard two separate rounds get fired inside the residence. One of them actually came through the window and out in our direction. We did not return fire and at that point we just kept our distance.”
Gross said they evacuated within a block or better and turned the gas off to the house.
“We knew we had gasoline, but we were trying to take away propane and stuff inside the residence to limit the explosion if we had one,” he said. “It was shortly after that he ignited the north side of the house where it seemed he had a bunch of ammunition piled up and the ammunition started going off, almost like fireworks.”
A fire started to build and the deputies could see the smoke.
“I ordered one of my deputies to break out the big pane window on the south side of the house with what we call a 40 millimeter impact round, it’s like a heavy beanbag. We shot two rounds of that through the window to break it, to try to give him an exit since he barricaded the door, at least he could try the window.”
Guyer did not try to exit.
“We saw him by the door on the south side of the house. He was pounding on the glass window of the door, and slowly, as he was there and the smoke filled up the house, he got lower and lower on the door,” Gross said. “Pretty soon I could see his hand towards the bottom of the door, and then I couldn’t see it moving anymore.”
Gross said it was at that point that he decided to prep an entry team, a tactical team behind a shield, and move up to the house.
“I breached the door after multiple tries and he was inside the door laying on top of a rifle, passed out at that point,” he said. “So we did pull him out of the house, away from the rifle and away from the fire and the smoke.”
They helped him breathe again, got him immediate medical care and he was transported to Myrtue Medical Center. The entire time, the fire department was staging down on Main Street and were called to extinguish the flames to the house.
Gross said the experience tied in several training sessions, negotiators and special tools.
“It was definitely an experience where we used the most of our trainings in one place and a lot of our resources,” Gross said. “We have a small department so that day we checked a lot of boxes as far as medical, fire, and law.”