Two Police Community Support Officers are to be recommended for a Royal Humane Society award for helping to save the life of cyclist who’d suffered a suspected heart attack in Bath.
Paul King and Howard Wilton were on patrol on Sunday afternoon, 14th December, when they came across the rider lying unconscious on the verge in Lansdown Lane.
They took over from members of the public who were giving first aid and together gave him cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, CPR, for around ten minutes until a paramedic and then an ambulance crew arrived and took him to the Royal United Hospital.
The man, in his 60s, is in a serious but stable condition.
He was carrying no identification and police appealed on social media for help. His family was traced soon afterwards and told what had happened.
Bath Chief Inspector Norman Pascal said: “PCSOs King and Wilton did exactly the right thing to help the man and to call other units to the scene. He had no pulse and wasn’t breathing when they found him, and their efforts played a big part in keeping him alive until expert medical care arrived.”
Howard has been a PCSO for ten years and Paul for seven, and this is the first time they have been called on to put their first aid and life-saving training into practice.
Paul said: “It was obvious from the moment we saw the cyclist that he was in a very bad way and that we had to do something quickly to help him. Our training just took over and we worked together to keep the CPR going.”
Howard said: “We’re grateful to a woman who was attending to the man before we arrived – she played a big part in this too. It was really important that he was resuscitated quickly and we’re just glad that we could do something for him.”
