CPD officer saves Crestview worker's life

The workweek had barely gotten started at Shaw Moving & Storage in Crestview on July 12 when a 50-year old employee suffered a major heart attack, keeled over and died. The story might have ended there, unhappily, were it not for the fact that several Crestview Police squad cars are equipped with portable defibrillators while on patrol.

Fortunately for Bernard Skinner, Officer Brian McCallum was on patrol when the emergency call came in. Thanks to his training, fast response and the availability of the emergency device properly called an automated external defibrillator, or AED, the outcome was a happy one.

“He fell over with a heart attack,” described company president Craig Shaw, describing Skinner’s incident. “It was early in the morning. We hadn’t even done anything yet. He had just gotten here. We had Officer McCallum show up and save his life.”

Shaw said Skinner had no history of heart troubles before the event. He credited the officer and the city’s purchase of the AEDs for saving his employee.

“The investment in emergency gear in the officer’s vehicle is what brought him (Skinner) back,” Shaw said. “He didn’t have a pulse or blood pressure. That thing saved his life.”

Police spokesman Lt. Andrew Schneider said the department purchased seven defibrillators and tries to have one in each patrol zone at all times. A $7,000 grant from the American Heart Association contributed to the purchase of the devices, each of which costs nearly $1,500.

McCallum, a two-year veteran with the force, said audio instructions on the AED talk the responder through the procedure as the device analyzes the victim’s condition. “It determines whether to shock the person,” McCallum said.

Though compact, the units pack quite a wollup, McCallum said.

“It’ll shock the mess out of you,” he said. “You’ll levitate.”

“The reason they said they decided to have those defibrillators is because the officer is almost always the first one on the scene,” Shaw said.

As for Skinner, he was released from the hospital and, “He’s alive and up and running around, but he hasn’t been released for work,” Shaw said.

“He surprised me,” McCallum said. “He was out of the hospital within a week. I stopped by and talked to him.”