Family Thanks Officer Who Saved Their Son’s Life At Sheepshead Bay Station
The family of a teenager who collapsed from a heart attack at the Sheepshead Bay subway station thanked the local cop on Wednesday who saved their son’s life, News 12 Brooklyn reports.
Last month, Officer Qiang Shi administered chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the young man, 19-year-old Rio Ferrer, on the station’s subway platform until EMS arrived and rushed Ferrer to Coney Island Hospital, the Daily News reports.
Ferrer remains hospitalized but is expected to recover.
The family returned to the same platform where their son nearly died to thank the officer for his life-saving effort.
“There are no words that can fully express how I feel about police officer Shi and his heroic efforts to save a life,” Ferrer’s mother, Dianne, told News 12 Brooklyn.
Video posted to YouTube shows Shi working to save the teenager. Ferrer was reportedly not breathing when the officer made it to the platform.
“Talk to me! Talk to me!” Shi shouts at Ferrer while administering CPR. “Stay awake, do not fall asleep.”
Shi told the Daily News that he thought he lost Ferrer until the teenager gasped for air during the chest compressions.
“After I heard the gurgle, I was like, ‘Oh, thank you, just stay with me. Just don’t go to sleep,’” he told the newspaper.
Before the meeting at the Sheepshead Bay station, Ferrer’s mother had already sent a letter to the NYPD in which she called Shi her son’s “guardian angel.” The family also presented Shi with an NYPD shield made of lego’s, assembled by Ferrer’s 10-year-old brother, and a sketch of a police badge, drawn by the mother, who is an art teacher, CBS New York reports.