A TEENAGER whose quick thinking saved the life of his father had his actions rewarded by the Royal Humane Society.
When landscape architect Nick Leeming collapsed with a heart attack just yards from his Darlington home while out jogging in July last year, he never expected his teenage son to be his saviour.
The 51-year-old’s wife, Jenny, and 16-year-old son, Tom, were alerted by neighbours to the unexpected drama unfurling almost on their doorstep.
The teenager, who was trained in life-saving skills at Barnard Castle School, took charge of the emergency and administered CPR while emergency services were on the way.
Tom, who was a lance corporal in the school’s cadet force, said it was a shock to see his father collapsed on the floor, but his training instantly kicked in.
He said: “I wasn’t expecting to see dad like that, but I took over doing the CPR from the jogger and thankfully managed to keep it going until the fire brigade arrived to take over and used the defibrillator on dad.”
Within four minutes County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service arrived and were able to take control and provide vital first responder life-saving skills.
The crew, part of the emergency medical response (EMR) pilot scheme with the North East Ambulance Service, used a defibrillator to shock Mr Leeming’s heart and get it started again.
The ambulance crew arrived shortly afterwards to care for and transport him, first to Darlington Memorial Hospital and then on to James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough.
Theresa May was facing resistance from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Parliament to her goal of conducting negotiations on Britain’s future trade relations with Europe at the same time as talks on arrangements for Brexit.
Simultaneous divorce and trade talks were a key demand in the Prime Minister’s letter to European Council president Donald Tusk triggering the two-year process of negotiating Brexit.
Mrs May told MPs that the delivery of the so-called Article 50 letter was “an historic moment from which there can be no turning back”. It would implement the democratic will expressed by voters in last year’s referendum by taking Britain out of the EU in “one of the great turning points in our national story”, she said.
But she was accused of trying to make a trade-off between security and commerce, as the letter warned that failure to reach agreement on trade would mean “our co-operation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened”
Finally, a retired subpostmaster who said his life was ruined after being accused of stealing £85,000 was demanding an apology after being cleared.
Tom Brown, who once won a bravery award for fending off a succession of armed raiders at a post office in Birtley, Tyne and Wear, blamed a controversial computer system called Horizon which processed millions of UK benefit payments. Mr Brown claimed glitches in the system – which cost £1bn and could process million of transactions every day – left them in debt.
He joined a legal action against Post Office Ltd focusing on the system and the way alleged shortfalls were dealt with.
The Post Office had always insisted there was no evidence of system-wide software problems. It said a thorough investigation had found no widespread problems.
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