PORTLAND, Ore. — Just before noon on Jan. 17, 2024, a day after the city of Portland had been coated in a thick layer of ice, a branch from a tree near Northeast Siskyou and 122nd Avenue fell onto a power line and then on to a red SUV sitting below. Inside the SUV was 21 year-old Tajaliyah Briggs, her boyfriend DeVonte Nash and their 9-month-old child.
Briggs, six months pregnant, and Nash left the vehicle and tried to walk up the slippery slope of an uphill driveway. Nash slipped down the driveway first with his baby in his arms and came in contact with the power lines, getting electrocuted and died. Briggs was fatally electrocuted when she tried reaching out for Nash as he was sliding and slid herself into the powerlines. Their 9-month-old son lay on Nash's lifeless body, unharmed and alive.
Briggs' 15 year-old brother Ta'Ron Briggs, a sophomore at the time at Milwaukie High School, saw his nephew lying there on Nash's body and went to help. Briggs slipped and fell on the ice, sliding down and touching the pool of water that the power lines had fallen into. Briggs died next to his sister.
Majiah Washington, 18, was in her driveway on the phone with a dispatcher when she saw the baby, lying on top of his father, move his head — the 9-month-old was alive. Having just seen three people shocked to death, she decided to try to save the boy. She kept a low crouch to avoid sliding into the wire as she approached, she said at a news conference the day after the deaths. As she grabbed the baby she touched the father's body, but she wasn't shocked, she said.
"I was concerned about the baby," said Washington, who recognized the woman as her neighbor's daughter. "Nobody was with the baby. I just grabbed the baby off. I pulled him up, I was swaddling him and I walked him up the hill."
For their heroism and act of selfless bravery, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission awarded both Majiah Washington and Ta'Ron Briggs the Carnegie Medal. The organization calls it the highest honor for civilian heroism in North America. According to the website for the Commission, "the Carnegie Medal is given throughout the U.S. and Canada to those who enter extreme danger while saving or attempting to save the lives of others."
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As part of the award, Washington will receive a $7,500 grant that she can spend how she wants as well as scholarship opportunities. Briggs' family will receive his $7,500 grant and could be eligible for funeral cost reimbursements.
A spokesperson for the the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission said the medals are hand struck and will be given to Washington and Briggs' family in the next couple of months.