Two NYPD officers are being credited with saving a man’s life after they found him profusely bleeding from a chainsaw mishap. Officers Amauris Rodriguez and Thomas Natoli were on patrol in the Bronx last Tuesday when they were flagged down by a speeding car.
“He flagged us down and he said, ‘I got somebody in the car bleeding. I need help,’” Rodriguez told the New York Daily News. “So we went over right away. We parked and we helped out.”
The driver was referring to Richard Tirado, 49, who had severed his arm with a chainsaw while chopping down trees, and had already passed out once due to blood loss, the news outlet reported.
Natoli said they could tell by the amount of blood pooling on the seat that Tirado had severed his artery, and they immediately began making a tourniquet. Rodriguez said he learned to apply a tourniquet first in the Army, and later in the New York Police Academy.
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“We administered aid right away,” he told the news outlet. “We applied a tourniquet to a high part of the shoulder to stop the bleeding completely, and then rendered aid as much as we could until the ambulance got there.”
Tirado is said to be recovering in the hospital in stable condition.