In his 18 years patrolling the streets of Las Vegas, Sgt. Richard Bilyeu had never dealt with anything quite like what he saw on morning in September 2018. Sergeant Bilyeu was dispatched to Durango Drive and Spring Mountain Road where bystanders found a woman badly bleeding. They thought she had been struck by a car. When Sergeant Bilyeu arrived he found the woman sitting on the ground wearing roller skates, her left hand missing. Worried that her hand was possessed, the woman had cut it off, Bilyeu said. But he acted quickly despite his shock and applied a tourniquet to her arm, and by the time she had arrived at University Medical Center for treatment, the bleeding had stopped. Sergeant Bilyeu said he met the woman at the hospital, but not before searching for her missing hand, which he found under a rock. “Bleeding can be a life-threatening condition, so taking care of that in a timely fashion allowed her to be in a stable condition, and she was able to undergo surgery to salvage her hand,” said Dr. Allison McNickle, the trauma surgeon who operated on the woman that day. “She had the best opportunity for the best possible outcome, and that’s what we appreciate: a partnership that allows us to save lives like that.” For his efforts Sergeant Bilyeu was presented with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s lifesaving award. “This is an exceptional organization made up of exceptional people who live that life of public service that care so much about this community,” Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said during the ceremony.