South Brunswick Police Chief Raymond Hayducka recognized two officers Monday for their actions in saving the life of a township man.
Chief Hayducka credited Officer Jason Gassman and Officer Bryan Sites with saving the life of 61-year-old Robert Woods who suffered sudden cardiac arrest on the morning of Nov. 9.
According to police, the officers responded to Mr. Woods’ home at 5:59 a.m. that morning after Mr. Woods’s wife, Lori Woods, called 911 to report that her husband was having trouble breathing.
While Ms. Woods was on the phone, a dispatcher asked her if her husband had any chest pain.
Ms. Woods turned around and realized her husband was not responding and she immediately recognized that he had stopped breathing, police said.
Ms. Woods, who is trained in CPR as part of her job as a local school teacher, immediately began the procedure.
Within four minutes Officers Gassman and Sites arrived on scene and entered the home with their first aid bag, oxygen, and a portable defibrillator.
According to police, the officers found Mr. Woods on the floor of his second floor bedroom with his wife performing CPR.
The officers took over doing compressions and applied the defibrillator pads to Mr. Woods’s chest, police said.
The defibrillator read-out advised the officers to shock Mr. Woods, and the officers applied the voltage.
Police said that, within a minute, the officers observed Mr. Woods open his eyes and attempt to sit up.
Mr. Woods then lay with his back against the bed as he tried to control his breathing and was speaking to his wife and officers when EMS and paramedics arrived minutes later, police said.
Mr. Woods was transported to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick and has since been released from the hospital and continues to recover at his home, police said.
Mr. Woods credits the officers and his wife with knowing CPR and acting quickly.
"I have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving," he said. "If not for their knowledge of CPR and quick actions I would not have survived."
Lori Woods said she could not be more thankful to the police and all who helped her and credited her knowledge of CPR with her being part of her elementary school’s medical emergency response team.
"In my 24 years in EMS and my time as an officer, I have never seen anyone sit up and talk after being in cardiac arrest," Officer Gassman said.
Nearly 1,000 people suffer cardiac arrest in the United States each day, according to the American Heart Association.
An estimated 88 percent of those cardiac arrests occur at home, according to the organization.
Bystander CPR provided immediately after sudden cardiac arrest can double or triple a victim’s chance of survival, but only 32 percent of cardiac arrest victims get CPR from a bystander, the organization said on its website.
Less than eight percent of people who suffer cardiac arrest outside the hospital survive.
Chief Hayducka credited the high value the department places on training and the support from the township administration and elected officials in obtaining the best equipment.
"These officers did a tremendous job utilizing all the skills, training, and equipment we have to save Mr. Woods," He said. "Their actions represent the best of what our agency does every day in trying to make a difference in lives of the people we serve."
For more information on learning CPR go to http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/.
