An officer who pulled a vulnerable man off a motorway bridge near Chester has won a Cheshire Police Federation Bravery Award.

On 20 June 2025, PC Kerrie Evans was single-crewed when she attended a report of a man standing on the wrong side of motorway bridge railings near Chester.

After blocking the road with her police van, she went to the bridge and tried to talk the man down.

"But there was no talking him down," she said. "I remember him saying that he's got nothing. He told me that he'd taken a load of medication and he was just waiting for his legs to go.

"Then I noticed that his legs started buckling. There was about 50cm between me and him, and I said: 'I can't hear what you're saying. The motorway is too loud. I'm not going to touch you, but can I come closer so I can hear you?'."

When his legs buckled, she moved fast and grabbed his backpack to pull him backwards. Two members of the public also grabbed him and pulled him over, with PC Evans taking most of the weight.

"I was thinking that if I don't do this now, he might not die, but he's going to have broken bones and horrendous injuries, because there's no traffic below," she added.

After the officer managed to get the man over the railings, he started to have a seizure.

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She said: "I was putting my fingers in his mouth to stop him biting his tongue and I was just talking to him, telling him it's going to be okay. Meanwhile, my radio was going mad. I told the control room: 'I am single crewed. There's nobody here. Can somebody else come and help me, please?'."

When the man came round from the seizure, PC Evans recalled: "We got talking and we were having a good chat, sat on the floor. And then that's when the cavalry arrived, everybody turned up. We popped him in the back of the van to wait for an ambulance. And again, we were just chatting away. He was telling me about his cat. I was telling him about my cats."

Having unexpectedly lost her husband last year, PC Evans described relating to the man's experience of loneliness and grief.

She said: "I know how hard it is to feel like you are the loneliest person in the world, because I've been living it.

"So when he was telling me that he felt like he had nobody, I said: 'Look, I know how you're feeling'."

The officer revealed just how surprised she felt to win the Cheshire Police Federation, stating how she was simply doing her job.

Expressing how how she would "do it for anybody", she said: "I want to care for people, I want to be there for them. I was like, this is going to go one of two ways, but we're going to go for the positive. This is going to be fine."

Cheshire Police Federation Chair Jamie Thompson said: "Kerrie acted with enormous empathy and care and with no shortage of courage that day.

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"Her calmness and quick-thinking in such a dangerous and unpredictable situation saved the man from a terrible fate. 

"She is a literal life saver and we are all so incredibly proud of her."

PC Evans will attend the Cheshire Police Federation Bravery Awards 2026 on Thursday 12 March.

At the event an overall winner will be announced, who will travel to London for the national Police Federation Bravery Awards in July.

The Cheshire Police Federation Bravery Awards are in association with Axon.

Also sponsoring the awards are Philip Williams, Slater & Gordon, Uniform Mortgages, Police Friendly, Niche, Accord, Cheshire Police Group Insurance Scheme, National Police Healthcare Scheme, No1 Copperpot Credit Union, Police Mortgages, JMW, Temple Legal.