A former Keswick firefighter helped save the life of a man who had “died” after suffering a heart attack in the town centre.
Ryan Sibley, 30, was one of three men who performed CPR on 52-year-old Andrew Pearce who had collapsed outside the Oxfam shop in Museum Square.
Several people rushed to the aid of the father-of-four who had been visiting the town from his Whitehaven home with his wife Barbara.
The couple had just had lunch and Mr Pearce had emerged from a shop after buying some camouflage pants when he began complaining about feeling unwell.
“He came out and went: ‘Whoaaa. I feel like I have just stood up too quickly.’ But he had not been sat down,” said Barbara. “That set the alarm bells ringing. He struggled to stand and I got him to a bench and sat down.
“Then he toppled over behind me and I thought he was having an epileptic fit because his eyes went to the back of his head and his breathing went funny. Then he started turning blue and I shouted out for help because I did not know what I was doing.”
Instantly, two women – one in a wheelchair – came over to help and one of them contacted the ambulance and while on the phone relayed questions like: “Is he still breathing?” over to Barbara and the other woman.
Then Scott Stanley, a member of the Cockermouth Mountain Rescue Team, took over and started performing CPR on Andrew before he was joined by Ryan and another man who is believed to have been an off duty paramedic.
Between them they took it in turns to perform CPR until paramedics from the North West Ambulance Service arrived and shocked Andrew with a defibrillator. He was then whisked to the Cumberland Infirmary, Carlisle, in an air ambulance.
Ryan was visiting his grandmother, Elaine Stoddart, in Derwent Close, Keswick, with his six-year-old son, Joseph, when they chanced upon the incident, which happened on Sunday February 19.
“I saw the fellow had collapsed outside Oxfam and there were already a couple of people helping him,” said Ryan who used to be an on-call firefighter when he lived in Keswick and now works for the Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service stationed at Workington.
“I noticed that the man’s breathing was coming in involuntary gasps and I was unable to locate a pulse
“I started doing CPR and between the three of us we did a couple of cycles each because we were getting tired.
“It was really emotional and intense,” added Ryan, whose watch delivers CPR training to the community on a weekly basis. “Afterwards I did not know how I should feel, whether I should feel happy or sad. I knew that I had done something that was good and when he was in the hands of the paramedics he was in a better state than when we had found him.”
Barbara said the hospital could not believe that her husband had survived the attack as he had been dead for 20 minutes.
“The lads that resuscitated him were just fantastic. If it was not for them Andrew would not be here. I feel that saying thank-you to them is not enough. I am forever in their debt because if it was not for their skills I would be without a husband, my four children would be without a dad and four grandchildren without a grandad.”
Barbara visited Workington fire station on Wednesday night to say a personal thank-you to all those involved in saving her husband’s life.
