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Published on Wednesday, January 29, 2003
in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel
West Boca · Two passers-by and a state Highway Patrol trooper gave critical care to a man whose car collided into the back of a blood mobile that was stalled on Florida's Turnpike, officials said Tuesday.
Lt. Pat Santangelo of the Florida Highway Patrol said the bus driver, Tracy Smith of Lauderhill, brought the Blue Bird bus -- transformed into a blood bank -- to a halt in a southbound lane near the Glades Road exit after it broke down just before 7:30 p.m.
Minutes later, the driver of a gold Nissan crashed into the bus and was pinned inside the wreckage almost 40 minutes.
Nobody on the bus was injured, but the Nissan driver was barely alive when the trooper, nurse and another passerby came to his aid. The identity of the Nissan driver was not released late Tuesday.
According to Santangelo, Trooper Tonya Bassett found the equipment to provide an artificial airway in her first-aid kit. Passerby David Schlesener of Pembroke Pines crawled into the wreckage and held the victim's head back while Edward Carl Layton, a nurse who had just finished his shift at Delray Community Hospital, inserted the device into the victim's throat.
"Those three individuals kept the man a live. They gave him a chance to survive," Santangelo said.
The victim was airlifted to Delray Medical Center in critical condition.