Cops save man after chainsaw cuts arm
A construction worker is alive and well thanks to a pair of quick-thinking Bronx cops who caught up to the speeding car he was in Tuesday and applied a tourniquet to the arm he nearly severed in a tree-cutting mishap.
Richard Tirado, 49, had already passed out once after the chainsaw accident, and the buddy who had put him in his pickup truck was driving all over the road because he didn't know where the hospital was.
With his friend's blood puddling on the seat beside him, the driver managed to attract the attention of a pair of cops who knew exactly what to do.
“He flagged us down and he said, ‘I got somebody in the car bleeding. I need help,” Officer Amauris Rodriguez, who was out on patrol with his partner Thomas Natoli, told the Daily News. “So we went over right away. We parked and we helped him out.”
Rodriguez said he learned to apply a tourniquet while training in the Army and then as a cadet of the New York Police Academy, and assisted Natoli, who put the makeshift device on Tirado's right arm.
“His artery was cut,” Natoli said. “He was spewing blood from the bottom of his elbow onto the seat. The seat was completely covered. From our training, just seeing the spewing of blood we knew it was serious. We administered aid right away. 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, 49, was cutting trees when the incident occurred, officials said.
The officers followed up and checked on Tirado at Jacobi Hospital, where he was recovering in stable condition.