‘I did my best’ Nurse who gave CPR to teen crash victim recalls bloody chaos

When Antonia Richards-Stewart saw a mangled car wrapped around a light post along the Port Henderson Road in Portmore, St Catherine, last Thursday, the registered nurse, who was on her way to work, immediately sprung into action.

“When I saw the firefighters and realised that there was fire, I knew it must have been a serious accident. I saw a wrecker trying to pull the mangled car off the pole and I shouted and asked if they needed help and they told me to hurry up and come. At the time I saw three occupants and was told that two persons were already rushed to the hospital,” she said.

Five occupants of a Toyota Mark X had to be cut from the vehicle following the crash that occurred minutes after 6 a.m. Two of the occupants, including a 17-year-old boy succumbed to their injuries.

Shortly after arriving at the scene, the 38-year-old Richards-Stewart said she was assisted by two other nurses, one of whom is Angel Cunningham.

“We went back for the other gentleman that was left in the vehicle and we realised that he was badly damaged. The other nurse got a lot of splinters in her knees as she had knelt down trying to sort him out. I noticed that she was bleeding so I went for the first aid kit in my car and dressed her. The lower limb of the other crash victim was badly damaged and we managed to arrest the bleeding as much as we could, but then we realised that he had lost consciousness,” said Stewart.

“The other nurse was trying her best with him. We put him in the back of the van and I just got up in the [police service] van and I started CPR as he was unconscious. I called my matron and told her that we had sent two to Spanish Town and I was coming to KPH (Kingston Public Hospital) with one and she had made preparations for him,” she said. Richards-Stewart admitted that it was hard to render assistance in the back of the vehicle.

“The van was tossing us but I managed to balance myself. One of the time I had to sit over him to balance both of us while still doing CPR. I begged him to stay with me and he gave me a big breath and then I lost him again and that was when he died,” she added.

A registered nurse for 15 years, Richards-Stewart also specialises in midwifery and nephrology and is a nurse manager at the KPH. A video of her applying CPR to the teen has gone viral, where most users praised her for her service.

Despite having years of experience dealing with trauma patients, Richards-Stewart admitted that she never gets used to it. She cried when the teen passed away.

“It was harsh and I cried and I called one of my seniors and I just outpoured on her. I cried and asked God what else could I have done. I did a debriefing with myself but then I have to realise that I never had the resources to work with either way. I did my best,” she said.

Growing up, Richards-Stewart said she always wanted to be a caregiver and fell deeply in love with the nursing profession from she was a child.

“Once I think of nursing, I think of giving service onto God because the Lord is entrusting me with a life in my hands, and that I don’t take lightly. Working at KPH, you will be shaken but not broken to the point where you can’t help to save another life. It’s not that you don’t have any empathy, but I now have to move on to someone else. Nursing comes with a level of maturity and remember, I am a mom of three and a wife. So at the end of the day, I have to go home to take care of my family,” Richards-Stewart said.

As she offered condolences to the victims’ families, Richards-Stewart expressed gratitude to the bystanders who also rendered assistance.

“Even if they had one hand with their phone videoing, the other hand was offering me carboard, belts and just about everything else to help the victims. Not everyone is medically trained, so there are times when they will rush to these scenes and try to help, and by them lifting [the victims] and throwing [them] in the vehicle, they could do more damage. But, they are not doing this intentionally, they just want to help. One of the things that all Jamaicans need to know is basic first aid,” she said.