Long Island Teen Hit In Chest By Line Drive Grateful For AED Machine
Officer saves adult male playing basketball at Camden HS
January 28, 2015An Errant Pitch,Then Nothing
June 2, 2015SHOREHAM, N.Y.(CBSNewYork) — A Long Island teenager who collapsed and went into cardiac arrest after getting hit in the chest by a line drive over the weekend is now home and recovering after being revived by an automated external defibrillator.
“It’s a miracle. Honestly, I feel like the luckiest person alive,” said 15-year-old Jack Crowley.
Crowley has scrapes on his face, but he’s not complaining. He’s alive thanks to an AED and some quick thinking.
“Really dizzy, shortness of breath, and then I had to go to my knees, I just couldn’t stand up,” Crowley recalled.
He was pitching to his younger brother at a Rocky Point batting cage on Saturday when he stepped out from behind the protective screen for a second. That’s when a line drive hit him in the chest, Gusoff reported.
Jack stopped breathing. Onlookers tried CPR and his parents feared the worst.
“I thought my son was dead,” said John Crowley.
“You feel like your child is dying in your arms, and you know it’s happening. And I wasn’t going to let him go, I kept looking at him because I thought he was leaving me,” said mom Nancy Crowley.
That’s when an off-duty Suffolk County police sergeant ran for a defibrillator in the field house.
It delivered a shock and in moments, Jack had regained consciousness and opened his eyes.
“Two to three minutes later, he was talking,” said John Crowley. “I just can’t say enough to the heroes who were there, who saved my son.”
The ninth-grade is now home from the hospital, benched for six weeks but grateful for the machine that made all the difference.
“It saved my life and I think it should be on every field,” Jack said.
Jack’s mother credits another mother with this miraculous save. A mother who lost her own son on a Long Island athletic field 15 years ago. The Louis Acompora Foundation has helped put thousands of AEDs on fields everywhere.
“That mother’s grief saved my child,” said Nancy Crowley.
Now, Jack wants to become a doctor to pay it forward.