Daly City police officer utilizes training to save life

DALY CITY (Map, News) - When police Officer Jason Craig was making his usual rounds through the streets of the Bayshore neighborhood recently, the last thing he expected to see was a woman bleeding to death on the sidewalk.

Before he noticed the victim, however, he saw several people frantically waving their arms at the intersection of Geneva Avenue and Santos Street across from the Cow Palace. The 32-year-old officer said he didn’t know what he was getting into.

Upon approaching the group, he noticed a car parked half way up on the sidewalk and a woman pinned to a light pole with blood gushing from her severed leg.

“There was about 15 or 20 people standing there just looking at her laying on the ground,” remembered the officer. “It was a chaotic scene, but my training kicked in and I remembered what I was taught and how vitally important it was to control the bleeding as soon as possible.”

Craig asked people in the crowd to give him a belt and applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

“Out of all the traffic collisions, this was by far one of the most traumatic things I’ve ever seen,” Craig said. “She was starting to lose consciousness, but as I put the tourniquet on her, she became more alert.”

According to police, the 28-year-old San Francisco woman was waiting for the bus with her husband when a car hit her, pinning her down and cutting off her leg. Acting chief of Daly City Police Department Eric Wollman said if he had not applied the tourniquet right away, the woman would have bled to death.

svasilyuk@sfexaminer.com