Edgartown police chief Bruce McNamee credited good samaritans, police officers, fire department volunteers and paramedics for saving a man’s life after a medical emergency caused him to crash his car Friday morning.
The man, a 67-year-old seasonal resident from Connecticut who has not been named, was driving on North Water street around 8 a.m. when an apparent medical emergency caused him to lose consciousness and crash his white Chevy Colorado pickup into a 2005 Jeep parked just north of Vineyard Vines, the chief said. Describing the incident, police said the pickup pushed the parked car down North Water street until it collided with a telephone pole, causing the truck to spin out and come to rest near a granite pillar in front of the Newes from America pub, taking out the pub’s brick planter.
Off-duty police Det. Mike Snowden was driving near the scene and stopped to investigate. He came upon passersby extricating the man from his vehicle, which was filled with smoke. One bystander who appeared to be a construction worker had smashed a window of the truck with a hammer to unlock the doors and pull the man out. Checking the man’s vital signs, Mr. Snowden felt no pulse and began to administer CPR. Sgt. Joel DeRoche arrived and assisted with CPR until Edgartown fire chief Alex Schaeffer arrived with paramedic Haley Krauss.
Mr. Schaeffer and Ms. Krauss continued CPR and used a defibrillator to revive the man’s pulse. The man was then taken by ambulance to the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, where his condition was stable enough to allow air transport to Boston.
Chief McNamee praised the response.
“It’s one of the rare occasions where all the right guys were in the right place at the right time,” he said.
Chief Schaeffer concurred. “We had a great response from our department because in addition to the ambulance, the motor vehicle accident had to be taken care of,” he said. “We had a lot of people coming from work to help us,” he said of the fire department volunteers.
Police said the man was transported to Boston Medical Center, where he remains in serious condition in the cardiac unit.
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