By Mark Scheer Niagara Gazette The Niagara Gazette Tue Oct 18, 2011, 12:02 AM EDT
NIAGARA FALLS — It started out as routine patrol duty.
It end up involving a life-threatening situation.
Three city police officers who helped save a woman’s life while on duty on earlier this year were honored by the city council on Monday for their professionalism while on the job.
During a brief ceremony at City Hall, Falls Police Superintendent John Chella thanked officers Paul Kudela, John Shuster and Franco Tallarico for helping to save Christine Depadre’s life and for demonstrating to the community the very best his department has to offer.
“Every day that I’m superintendent of police is a good day, but today is an especially good day,” said Chella, who joined city lawmakers and Mayor Paul Dyster in recognizing the officers’ conduct.
On Sept. 11, Shuster and Tallarico were on duty during the annual Niagara Falls Blues Festival when they were approached by a patron who reported a woman who appeared to have injured herself following a fall near the old Rainbow Centre Mall. At first, Shuster said it appeared as though Depadre wasn’t injured too severely. He said her demeanor soon changed. She started having seizures, appeared to be having difficulty breathing and her skin tone started to turn blue.
“A woman came up to me and said her friend tripped and fell and appeared unconscious,” Shuster said, recalling the scene. “While we were waiting for the ambulance, she just fell backwards and she just stopped breathing and started losing consciousness.”
While Shuster and Tallarico attended to Depadre , they were joined at the scene by Kudela who arrived in a patrol car.
“When I got there, she was sitting down and was coherent,” Kudela said. “At first, she didn’t want an ambulance. Out of nowhere, she just started having seizures.”
Kudela performed a sternum rub — a method of checking for consciousness often used by emergency response personnel. When the victim did not respond, he checked her vital signs and was unable to find a pulse. At that point, he opened the victim’s airway and administered chest compressions until a Rural Metro ambulance arrived. Depadre was transported to Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center for treatment where she was listed in stable condition.
For their role in offering her assistance, Kudela, Shuster and Tallarico were presented with proclamations acknowledging their work by the mayor and the city council.
The officers said they were just doing their jobs, but it felt good to be noticed just the same.
“It’s definitely nice to be recognized,” Kudela said. “It doesn’t happen enough because there’s a lot of guys on the job who do things like this all the time and they don’t get recognized.”
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