GRANDVIEW, Mo. — The chilly air brought Officer Brian Poynter inside an O’Reilly Auto Parts store. Instead of looking for gloves, employees rushed him toward the back of the store.
“Another told me to come to the back, someone was having a heart attack,” he said.
He said the man didn’t have a pulse. That’s when he called the radio for help. Within seconds, Officer Collin Morris responded.
“I thought I was going to look for some other traffic stop, but he’s on the radio all ready. What’s going on?” said Morris.
Poynter helped Morris a few minutes earlier with a traffic stop in the O’Reilly parking lot. He heard the emergency over the radio and drove back to the store with an AED, or automated external defibrillator.
“The machine is able to diagnose whether it needs to do the shock on its own, even tells you when to do CPR. It tells you if you’re pushing hard enough, pushing too hard,” Pointer added.
A few weeks ago, the Grandview Police Department spent nearly $18,000 on thirteen new AEDs to put in all patrol cars and jails.
This is the first time both officers used this device, but they say it likely won’t be the last.
When EMS loaded the man into the ambulance, he had a heartbeat and was breathing on his own.