ROCKINGHAM — The man that saved then-6-year-old Haiden Prevatte from a pair of dogs that attacked her as she was getting off the bus in January has been posthumously named a Carnegie Hero for his actions.
David Earl Covington passed away on May 26 due to natural causes at 72 years old. On Jan. 9, Covington was driving behind a school bus on Billy Covington Road when he saw Haiden getting off the bus. Two dogs that had been roaming the area earlier that day — prompting at least two calls to Animal Control — viciously attacked her, but Covington refused to be a bystander.
He got out of his car and grabbed what he later called a “perfectly shaped” stick from a ditch nearby and was able to scare the dogs away.
Covington told the Daily Journal the following day that, “Sometimes you’re in the right place at the right time … You just jump out and do what you’ve got to do.”
Haiden was airlifted to a hospital in Chapel Hill that afternoon where she was treated for 21 puncture wounds, two broken ribs and three gashes in her head. She made a full recovery, only missing two weeks of school.
The Carnegie Medal is given throughout the U.S. and Canada to those who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the lives of others. A total of 10,117 Carnegie Medals have been awarded since the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Hero Fund Commission’s inception in 1904, according to a press release.
Commission Chair Mark Laskow said each of the awardees or their survivors will also receive a financial grant. The Commission is named after industrialist Andrew Carnegie.
Covington was a member of Roberdel Baptist Church, a veteran of the U.S. Army, a Clerk for 43 years with CSX Railroad, a volunteer fireman with Northside Volunteer Fire Department and drove for Griffin Auto.
Two weeks after the attack, Haiden’s family and other community members held a cookout honoring Covington’s actions. He was presented with a plaque that read, ““Thank you so much for your quick action and disregard for your personal safety … while saving the life of Haiden Prevatte. Your heroic actions saved her life and also from more serious injuries to little Ms. Haiden.”
Haiden’s mother, Candas Prevatte, in an interview with Daily Journal at the cookout described the feeling of being reunited with her daughter’s hero.
“Without him being at the right place at the right time, I would no longer have my daughter,” she said. “To see the man that continued to give her life about breaks my heart, and it’s a happy feeling … it makes me feel very good inside to see him.”
