Postal Worker Hears Bloodcurdling Scream, Uses Belt To Help Save Elderly Man's Life
Mailman Fernando Garcia did more than deliver mail earlier this month: He helped save a man’s life after a dangerous accident.
Garcia was finishing up a day of work in Norwalk, California, on Oct. 9 when he heard someone screaming. He ran toward the scream, not knowing what he would find.
What he would find was 70-year-old Miguel Cabral, who was doing some work on the garage when he somehow managed to cut his arm with the chainsaw he was using.
“I was fixing a part of the roof in the garage,” Cabral told The Associated Press. “I looked once and I knew it was bad so I told my sister to call the emergency.”
The gash, a few inches below his elbow, ran five inches long by three inches wide. It was bleeding so much Cabral decided lying on the ground to slow the bleeding would be the best thing to do until help arrived.
“My sister was going crazy and kept asking what to do,” he said.
Cabral lives with his sisters, ages 75 and 60, and it was the younger one who called for help. In the meantime, their local mailman discovered them and jumped into action, using his belt to fashion a makeshift tourniquet.
“The minutes were very long,” Cabral said. “It seemed like the paramedics were never going to get there.”
In what turned out to be a bit of a miracle, Cabral didn’t end up needing surgery and can still move his fingers. He got 10 stitches and has expressed his deep gratitude for Garcia’s help.
“Doctors kept asking me and checking if I could move my fingers, and I could,” Cabral said.
“I told him a million times, ‘Thank you,'” he added, referring to the mailman. “He is the real hero.”
Garcia seems happy to have been able to lend a hand.
“I was a little panicky but at the end of the day … I did what anybody else would have done, which was to try to stop the bleeding,” Garcia told KNBC-TV.
“I was just fortunate to be there, to help him out.”
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Norwalk Station posted about the incident to recognize the mailman’s heroics.
EVERY DAY HERO-A male accidently cut himself w/a chainsaw. Luckily Mail Carrier Mr. Garcia heard the family’s screams & sprung into action using his belt as a tourniquet 2 stop the bleeding on the man’s arm. Man has good prognosis due 2 Mr. Garcia’s actions. pic.twitter.com/mzO7AzY9No
— LASD Norwalk Station (@NorwalkLASD) October 9, 2020
“EVERY DAY HERO-A male accidently cut himself w/a chainsaw,” the station tweeted. “Luckily Mail Carrier Mr. Garcia heard the family’s screams & sprung into action using his belt as a tourniquet 2 stop the bleeding on the man’s arm.
“Man has good prognosis due 2 Mr. Garcia’s actions.”
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