TEACHERS SAVE BOY AFTER FREAK ACCIDENT
Third-grade boy was bleeding from accidental pencil-stabbing.
WELLINGTON — Two Wellington teachers are to thank for saving the life of one of their students last week.
Third-grader Kolston Moradi was waiting to be picked up from Equestrian Trails Elementary School on Nov. 1 when in a “freak accident” his freshly sharpened pencil stabbed into his arm near his armpit as he sat down — without him feeling a thing, according to a Palm Beach County School District news release.
When 8-year-old Kolston realized what happened, he pulled out the pencil and told reading teacher Mandi Kapopoulos and ESE coordinator Elizabeth Richards. Kapopoulos used her sleeve as a tourniquet on Kolston’s arm as Richards, who studied nursing before deciding to be a teacher, ran to find gloves so she could apply pressure to the wound.
“My shirt was drenched (with blood),” Kapopoulos said. “And there was a trail of blood all over the floor.”
Richards lay down on the floor with Kolston, trying to keep him calm as she continued to apply pressure. “I just focused on Kolston,” she said. “I kept telling him, ‘You’ve got this. It’s going to be OK.’”
As the teachers waited with Kolston for emergency personnel to arrive, his mother, Annalisa Moradi, was outside waiting in line to pick up her son when the school called and asked her to come inside. “When I saw the ambulance, my heart sank,” she said.
Equestrian Trails Prin- cipal Michelle Johnson walked Moradi to Kolston, who was being tended to by first responders. Moradi said she didn’t realize how serious the incident was until Kolston was in the ambu- lance: The pencil had sunk 6 inches into his arm, punc- turing an artery.
“The EMT told me that if the teachers hadn’t acted as quickly as they had, my son would be dead,” Moradi said.
Kolston got two staples in his arm and insisted on returning to school the next day.
“There are no words to say thank you enough. Equestrian Trails and (these teachers) will be with us the rest of our lives,” Moradi said.