A modest Waterford City barman has been hailed as a hero after his quick-thinking and swift reactions helped bring a customer back to life recently.
The hero and saviour of the moment David Hearne who works at Shortts bar has received great praise from many after he amazingly saved the life of a man (who does not want to be named) after he stopped breathing for over a minute and a half. The remarkable incident which occurred on March 28th only came to light recently after he decided to give an interview with the Irish Mirror to explain what happened on that terrifying day.
However David aged 26, says he does not consider himself to be a hero and said he is just delighted the unnamed customer is on the mend. The quick thinking barman told the paper: “It all happened when a customer came up to security and said that their friend was in distress so they went to check and saw they were hunched up and not breathing properly. “They called me because they know I volunteer with Waterford Marine Search and Rescue and straight away I saw they were having an asthma attack.
“The person didn’t have an inhaler with them and we made a medical announcement for one but unfortunately nobody had one. “We moved them to a back area for their privacy and called an ambulance, by this stage they were getting worse and only having three-four breaths per minute.
The heroic David further explained: “We called an ambulance and I was speaking to them, as soon as I put down the phone the person had stopped breathing.” “I started doing CPR on them straight away and after about a minute or a minute-and-a-half they came back to us and that’s when the ambulance arrived. “But I heard that he kept slipping back into that state on the way to University Hospital Waterford.
“I’m used to dealing with people in the marine search and rescue but normally we’re pulling people out of the water and only doing a few compressions, I’ve never had someone go from alive to dead to alive again like that.“I wasn’t terrified though, my training kicked in straight away, it was only afterwards that I thought about what had happened.”
David also revealed that he has only gotten to speak to the recovering customer recently, but is absolutely delighted he’s getting better. David said: “I’m very glad that he was there and it didn’t end up worse…“This shows the importance of people learning first-aid and CPR, we’re also trying to get a defibrillator for Shortts. “No pub in Waterford has one and it can take half and hour for an ambulance to come, in situations like this every second counts.”
Meanwhile a close friend of the unfortunate customer who experienced the attack, had nothing but praise for David’s brave actions. The unidentified close friend said: “Our friend went into what I think they called Respiratory Arrest and stopped breathing, the staff member started CPR and thank God got him back and kept him there until the paramedics arrived there.
“All I know is that without Dave God knows what would have happened.
“I don’t want this to go unnoticed, this young man should be praised for it’s not everyday you save a life.
“Even when he came to find us after everything he was calm… Which helped us even though we panicked…
“My friend is doing great and I can’t bear think what could have been.”
Source: Irish Mirror