OTTAWA—Moments after two shots were fired at Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, five people ran towards the danger instead of away from it.

One was a government lawyer, en route to a meeting, who flung her coffee and briefcase aside to begin chest compressions on the soldier.

Another was a former nurse whose medical instinct — developed through years of experience with trauma — instantly kicked in, telling her to put pressure on one of Cirillo’s wounds.

Yet another was a corporal, patrolling the war memorial site, who rushed to his comrade’s side, putting pressure on the other gunshot wound. A colonel who had been walking on the busy strip began giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Completing the team was Martin, a passerby who kept the fallen soldier’s legs elevated to help increase blood flow to his heart and head.

Each performed a role and together they tried to save the life of the 24-year-old. They had never met before and didn’t have a plan, but they all had the same goal.

“We were five complete strangers and nobody focused on anything but that soldier and trying to save him,” said Barbara Winters, the lawyer who rushed to Cirillo’s side.

Winters just finished snapping a photo of the two soldiers on guard at the war memorial when she heard the gunshots. The 52-year-old stopped in her tracks, fearing the worst following Monday’s fatal attack on a soldier in Quebec.

“I started running toward them. I was looking for the guards to be standing and I knew as soon as I didn’t see them that they had been the target,” Winters, who works on legal affairs for the Canada Revenue Agency, told the Star.

“So I just ran there. And when I got there, Margaret (Lerhe) had her hands on one wound and the corporal . . . had his hand on the other wound.”

She said the five worked in team. A man who she knows as Martin held up his feet while Lerhe and the corporal tried to stanch the bleeding. Winters, who served in the Canadian Armed Forces Naval Reserve as a medical assistant, began chest compressions while the army colonel gave mouth-to-mouth. They loosened his necktie.

“There was no panic, there was no screaming — everybody was just focused on the soldier and trying to help him,” said Winters.

For Margaret Lerhe, it was instinctual to rush over to help the injured Cirillo. The 61-year-old former nurse, who now works out of the Élisabeth Bruyère Hospital in Ottawa, has years of experience dealing with life-or-death situations, said her husband, Connor Grimes.

Still, she was evidently shocked by what occurred, calling her husband moments after the shooting, “a tad upset and a tad hysterical,” he said. Grimes could barely understand what she was saying.

“I heard, ‘soldier, help, police,’ so I was trying to get her to calm down, and I could tell that she was in distress.”

Lerhe also works with the Ottawa chapter of the Remote Area Medicine Volunteers, a charity that provides free health care to those in need, and she “has seen her share of trauma,” Grimes said.

Running towards Cirillo to help was therefore “an automatic reaction for her, so she didn’t hesitate one iota.”

Winters and the colonel switched places and she moved to Cirillo’s head while the other man took over chest compressions. She watched as the colour went back into his face, but he soon began to grow pale.

She began telling him how loved he is and how proud everyone is of him.

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“I kept telling him repeatedly that he was loved, that he was a brave man,” said Winters through tears.

“I said look at what you were doing — you were guarding the dead. You were standing at the cenotaph. I said we’re all so proud of you, your parents are so proud of you, I said your family loves you, everybody here that’s working on you loves you.”

As the ambulance pulled away with Cirillo inside, Winters and Lerhe held hands. The colonel and others who had been trying to save Cirillo comforted one another.