Deputy Austin Meredith Awarded Medal of Valor From KY Sheriff's Association

Edmonson Voice Report:
On Thursday, Sept 16th, Edmonson County Sheriff's Deputy Austin Meredith was awarded the Medal of Valor from the Kentucky Sheriff’s Association.

Deputy Meredith was nominated by Sheriff Shane Doyle based on his response to a recent domestic situation involving a 14 year-old juvenile armed with knives. According to the Edmonson County Sheriff's Office, while being an obvious “deadly-force” encounter, Deputy Meredith was able to use great restraint and, knowing he had other officers on scene who had deadly-force cover, he deployed a taser, which disabled the suspect and allowed time to disarm the knife-wielding young man.

For his poise during a very frantic and stressful situation, Deputy Meredith was selected out of many qualified candidates throughout the Commonwealth to be one of four deputies awarded this prestigious decoration. This was the third Medal of Valor earned by officers with the Edmonson County Sheriff’s Office in its history.

“Every member of the Sheriff’s Office deals with dangerous situations regularly," said Sheriff Shane Doyle. "Occasionally, a situation is so critical that it deserves a closer examination, and this call that our office responded to could have easily become an officer-involved shooting.  It would have been clearly ruled as proper use of deadly force, but thanks to excellent training, good judgement, and intervention from the Good Lord above, it ended with minimal force and everyone being safe. I’m very proud to have Deputy Meredith on my staff.”