Lana Bellamy

lBellamy@th-record.com

TOWN OF NEWBURGH – Newburgh town police Officer Matt Zuniga was sipping his morning coffee about 8:30 a.m. Sunday when he saw a report of an unconscious man who had crashed his car in West Meadow Winds, a small neighborhood near South Plank Road.

Zuniga quickly arrived to find the man not breathing, his heart apparently not beating, in his car that was rammed against a small tree.

A series of quick decisions and speedy recall of medical training led Zuniga and Officer Michael Surita to save the life of the 50-year-old driver.

“I hope he makes a full recovery,” said Zuniga, a four-year town officer. “I’d like to think we played a part in getting him to the hospital in a timely fashion for that to happen.”

Zuniga said the vehicle jumped the curb as it drove along the curvy West Meadow Wind Lane. The man’s car downed a small tree and a speed limit sign before stopping against another tree.

Zuniga placed the car in park and pulled the driver out.

Surita, who celebrated a year with town police Wednesday, arrived as Zuniga began chest compressions.

Surita used a bag valve mask to pump air into the man’s lungs and prepared the automatic external defibrillator.

Every town officer is required to carry an AED bag in his or her vehicle. The equipment comes with a mask that can replace mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Officers are trained annually on how to operate the AED, but Surita said it is made to be easy enough for anyone to use.

Diagrams inside the AED case show where to place pads on an adult or child and the machine talks to the user.

After the third shock, Surita said, the man’s chest rose independently and his still-unconscious body searched for a breath. One final shock was advised.

Zuniga said it is more common for the AED to advise against shocking a person.

“This is the first one I’ve been at in four years that there were four shocks advised, which is a good sign because its detecting there’s an irregular heartbeat and potential to fix that,” Zuniga said.

Ten minutes later, an ambulance arrived and Emergency Medical Technicians took over.

The man was transported to Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in the City of Newburgh.

Zuniga said the man was placed in the Intensive Care Unit. His license indicated he was from New York state, but did not live in the Town of Newburgh. They believe a medical episode caused the crash, but Zuniga said they do not know exactly what happened.

When they last checked on Monday, the man was still in ICU.

The officers know little about the man, overall, but believe he was on his way to a contracting job, Surita said, noting he had a bag of breakfast and coffee in the car.

“If there’s one thing I’ll look back on in the future, fast forward 20 years from now, it’s not about how many people you arrested,” Zuniga said. “… How many people did I save? How many lives did I change?”

lbellamy@th-record.com