SALEM, Va. – A police officer with the Salem VA Health Care System helped save a driver from an unexpected situation.
On Oct. 23, Officer Clinton Wimer was driving home after a 12-hour shift when he saw a vehicle in the opposite lane veer off the road. Wimer said the vehicle hit a tree and bounced into a sign, causing him to move into action.
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When he got to the vehicle, he found the driver, an elderly man, unresponsive with his wife next to him in the passenger seat.
“I thought maybe he had a heart attack, but he was unresponsive, and the car was smoking so I needed to move him. I used a seatbelt cutter to free him from the vehicle and took him a safe distance away and checked his vitals,” Wimer recalls.
Wimer gave him CPR when he couldn’t find a pulse or heard breathing. The man’s heartbeat and breathing returned after one round of CPR, pushing Wimer to execute two more rounds of CPR before the vitals returned.
“At that time a lady stopped and said she was EMS trained, so she monitored his vitals while I checked the man’s wife who appeared unharmed. When the woman who was helping said he lost his pulse again, we started CPR again,” he said.
About 30 seconds after they were able to revive them, Roanoke County Fire and EMS arrived a the scene to transport the man to the hospital.
Wimer said he never got the name or the driver or the woman who helped him, but he said he’s confident the man was alive when he arrived at the hospital.
He even urges people to get CPR trained.
“It’s definitely worth it. I thought I was done with my day, and out of nowhere a situation arose where someone needed help.”