Hazel Park police officers save bleeding man

HAZEL PARK — When a local woman rushed her bleeding husband to the Hazel Park Police Department, officers sprang into action to keep the man alive.

The incident occurred around 4:16 p.m. Aug. 12 when a Hazel Park woman drove to the parking lot that the Police Department shares with Hazel Park City Hall and the 43rd District Court, next to the library at the corner of Nine Mile and John R roads.

With her was her husband, a 23-year-old Hazel Park man. She had driven him to the police station seeking medical aid.

She flagged down an officer in the parking lot and explained that her husband had cut his arm very badly after punching through a glass window at their home. She said they had been arguing over him working too many hours, and he had struck the window when he grew upset.

The officer found the wounded man in the passenger seat of the woman’s vehicle. He was bleeding profusely from a deep laceration on his lower right arm, and he had already suffered significant blood loss.

The woman said that witnesses back home had told her to drive him to the hospital, but she had decided to stop at the police station for help because the victim was losing too much blood.

Two officers immediately applied a tourniquet to the man’s arm and called for paramedics. The man was transported to a hospital where he is now expected to recover.

According to William Hamel, the police chief of Hazel Park, the actions of the officers saved the man’s life. The chief did not provide their full names, but he identified the two officers who worked to apply the tourniquet as Sgt. Conz and officer Hanks. He said officer Holifield also helped by providing information to hospital personnel so that they could plan their treatment.

Joseph Simpson, a firefighter with the Hazel Park Fire Department, said that residents are advised to do what they can to stop the bleeding until help arrives.

“With any type of cut resulting in blood loss, whether it be arterial or venous, the first line of treatment is always going to be applying hard, direct pressure over the wound,” Simpson said. “The patient can apply the pressure themselves, or a family member or other bystander can help. But applying that hard, direct pressure is the best thing to do until we arrive. Press down hard enough so the body does what it needs to do, naturally constricting itself for the wound to clot.”

The police chief said in an email that all patrol cars are equipped with first aid bags that include tourniquets.

“Application of a tourniquet when needed has become a primary part of our training along with handling active assailants and shooting victims,” Hamel said. “It is a valuable tool that not only can save a police officer’s life, (but it can also) save anyone who suffers an injury resulting in mass blood loss.”