A Good Samaritan found a 70-year-old Festus man lying on the parking lot outside the Twin City Walmart at about 1:45 p.m. April 10 and gave him CPR, hoping to save him. Sadly, the man later died from cardiac arrest, authorities reported.
“It was on the west end of the parking lot (at 650 S. Truman Blvd.),” Festus Police Chief Tim Lewis said. “A 46-year-woman was already giving CPR to him when paramedics arrived. She said she saw him lying on the ground and began giving chest compressions. Another man there called 911.”
Lewis identified the woman who administered the CPR as Christy Buehler of Festus.
A witness to the incident, Megan Laut of Festus, said she was touched by Buehler’s efforts to help the man.
“I watched the most heartbreaking, yet heartwarming thing I have seen in a long time,” she wrote in a Facebook message to the Leader. “I was pulling into Mobile on the Run and noticed in the Walmart parking lot a man laying on the ground with his car door open and a woman tirelessly doing CPR. I am CPR trained, so I drove over to see if she needed help or to be relieved.
“As soon as I pulled and parked, the paramedics arrived. The man was in cardiac arrest. They quickly put masks on both the patient and themselves and hooked him to the (CPR) device and took him.”
Laut said she was impressed Buehler put the man’s needs above her own.
“She tirelessly was performing CPR on a stranger, no mask, no protective gear at all, in a dangerous time,” Laut said. “She didn't care about that. She cared about saving his life. She stayed and talked to the police and was so distraught you would have thought she was a family member. The world needs more people like that.”
When paramedics from the Joachim-Plattin Ambulance District arrived on the scene, they took over the man’s care and transported him to Mercy Hospital Jefferson in Crystal City, JPAD Administrator Curtis Stueve said.
“We arrived to find a man in cardiac arrest and we initiated cardiac resuscitation,” Stueve said. “Unfortunately, the man died shortly after arriving at the hospital.”