‘hero teens saved My liFe’
TWO schoolboys have been hailed heroes for saving the life of an elderly man they found bleeding after a fall.
Jack Brown and Scott Griffin, two Year 9 pupils at Bishop of Llandaff High School, were walking home after classes last Thursday when they spotted Ken Goodwin lying in his garden.
Mr Goodwin, 89, had fallen from a step and hit his head against a wall, severing a major artery in his brain.
The two 14-year-olds came to his rescue, calmly phoning an ambulance, before alerting Mr Goodwin’s wife Beryl, 87, who was in the house and didn’t realise her husband was injured.
Mrs Goodwin said: “These boys were so quick off the mark. By the time I got to my husband they had rung for an ambulance.
“He was told by the doctor that he was a very lucky man.
“They said that five more minutes bleeding like that would have been fatal.”
The boys waited on the kerb to flag down the ambulance once they had told Mrs Goodwin about her husband’s fall.
“We were quite nervous because there was a lot of blood but we just tried to keep calm and rang for the ambulance,” Scott, from Fairwater, said.
Jack, who lives in Canton, added: “Neither of us have ever had to do anything like this before.
“We stayed with him, rang the ambulance and got his wife, making sure he was OK.
“When the ambulance was on the way, I ran to the end of the road to wave them up the right way.”
Despite his serious injury, Mr Goodwin did not lose consciousness throughout the ordeal.
He said: “It could’ve been a very different story if the boys didn’t find me. I do think they saved my life, and I am very proud of them.”
Mrs Goodwin visited Scott and Jack at school on Monday to thank them for their quick-thinking.
She said: “I was in such a state at the time as you can imagine.
“I didn’t know whether I thanked them or not, so I took them chocolates, a box of Heroes, and told them they were my heroes.”
June Bowen Jones, an assistant head teacher at Bishop of Llandaff High School, said: “We are tremendously proud of these two boys.
“From what we understand, they acted really calmly and responsibly.
“When people contact us from the community we sometimes think, ‘Oh dear, what’s this going to be about?’
“So it was wonderful to hear such positive news about two of our pupils.”
Mr Goodwin is now recovering from his injuries at home, with help from his wife.
He spent five nights at the University Hospital of Wales, returning home on Tuesday.
A Welsh Ambulance Service spokesperson said: “We had a call at approximately 3.15pm last Thursday, March 23, to reports an elderly gentleman had fallen at an address in Insole Gardens, Llandaff.
“We sent an emergency ambulance to the scene, and the man was taken to the University Hospital of Wales.”