Oklahoma State Penitentiary officer, Sgt. Dustin Willbanks, was given the 2021 One Voice United Medal of Honor in Washington, D.C. during Law Enforcement Week.

The award was for his response Oct. 8, 2021 when an inmate stabbed him in the neck with a pencil. The maximum-security inmate, Willbanks and his partner were escorting, managed to grip the sharpened pencil despite being handcuffed. Willbanks proceeded to help restrain the inmate before anyone else could be hurt, all while the pencil remained lodged in his throat.

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“It went in straight through the front and right back,” Willbanks said in a press release. “It missed my esophagus by one-eighth of an inch.”

Willbanks returned to work within a week of being stabbed.

Since he has been awarded the 2021 ODOC Medal of Valor Award, the National American Association of Wardens and Superintendents Medal of Valor during the organization’s annual conference in San Antonio, Texas and most recently the 2021 One Voice United Medal of Honor in Washington, D.C. just last week.

In an Oklahoma Department of Corrections video, Willbanks says he wasn’t looking for any awards, he was just doing what anyone would do.

The Correctional Peace Officers Foundation will honor Willbanks in June in Reno, Nevada.

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