[VIDEO] Police, Rescue Squad Honored for Life-Saving Rescue

It was Friday night shortly before 7.

Mediterra Restaurant and Taverna on Hullfish Street in Princeton was packed with diners.

Ptl. Steve Lattin was on Witherspoon Street when the call came in. A woman at the restaurant was unresponsive.

As Lattin drove just a few blocks, the dispatcher continued to send updates. The woman began seizing. A couple of seconds later, she was unconscious.

Lattin and Ptl. Michael Schubert arrived at the restaurant moments later.

Immediately inside the restaurant’s doors, at the first table to the right, Barbara Ritz, 67, of Trenton was lying on her left side, her family and friends nearby.

“I turned her over and noticed she was very blue in the face and not breathing,” Lattin said. “I immediately started chest compressions.”

Schubert placed a bag valve mask over the Ritz's face to pump oxygen into her airwaves.

Within two minutes Cpl. Marla Montague arrived. She opened the portable defibrillator that all officers carry on patrol, affixed patches to the patient’s chest and turned the machine on.

The machine reads a patient’s heart rhythm and then gives a “shock” or “no shock” alert.

In this case, a “shock” notification appeared.

Sgt. Joanne Malta pushed nearby tables out the way with help from restaurant staff.

The machine shocked Ritz's heart. Latin continued chest compressions.

Nothing happened.

Two minutes later, she was shocked again.

And then the best news of all: Ritz began to gasp for air.

A few minutes later members of Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad-
which is staffed purely by volunteers at night and may be at another call at any given time- arrived.

The EMS crew quickly helped the woman with her breathing, checked her airways, loaded her onto a stretcher and headed to the hospital.

Montague estimates it was less than five minutes between the time the
dispatch call came in to the moment the patient was shocked for the first time.

Getting to a patient quickly is critical, which is why police say they're glad they have the right equipment in an emergency.

“The longer the time goes, it can cause damage to the brain,” Malta
said.

Not an issue in this case, as the Ritz was sitting in bed and
talking to an officer just six hours later.

“She was not breathing and had no pulse and essentially we brought her
back,” Schubert said. “It was gratifying and humbling in the same sense.”

It was a far cry from the outcome the same officers saw a week earlier, when they responded to the car crash that killed Rabbi James Diamond on Riverside Drive.

At that scene, the defibrillator issued a “no shock” alert. It was too late.

“That was tragic and a very bad situation,” Montague said. 

Both incidents happened less than a month after the Police Department’s annual CPR and defibrillator training. Officers said the training makes it so that in cases of emergency, instinct simply kicks in.

On Friday night, that instinct saved a woman’s life.

The situation began quickly and ended abruptly.   

After the ambulance left, the officers simply went on to their next calls.

“It can be an alarm or a multi-car accident,” Montague said. “For me it was a bus accident with 21 people on board. It’s all part of the job.”