DAVIE, Fla. – Video captured two Florida Highway Patrol troopers' desperate race to save a life on the side of I-95.
If you ask trooper Maykoll Souza, it was just a matter of his training kicking in.
It happened Sept. 1 between 9 and 10 p.m. Souza says he was parked in his cruiser in a construction zone in the northbound lanes between the Sunrise Boulevard east and west exits when a driver across the roadway started yelling to him.
“They advised there had been an incident, maybe 200-300 yards behind me where a vehicle had collided with a guard rail,” Souza recalls.
He looked back, spotted an SUV and made his way over to it.
“The driver was kind of slumped back, with his head kind of tilted back,” Souza said. “I opened the driver door and I observed that his skin was very pale, his eyes were rolled back.”
Believing the driver was going through a drug overdose, Souza gave the man two doses of NARCAN, a nasal spray used to reverse opioid overdoses.
But the man’s condition didn’t improve, so Souza and another trooper who had arrived, David Andrade, pulled the man out of the car and Souza began CPR.
The troopers then hooked the man up to an automated external defibrillator, But the AED said no shock was needed and instructed them to keep doing chest compressions.
Finally, after about two minutes, the man regained consciousness.
“It was just a great feeling to see that he was able to come back and I was able to get him there,” Souza says.
There is still an ongoing DUI investigation involving the man who was saved, and his identity has not been released.