Knicks fans risked their own safety to save a reveler suffering from a suspected drug overdose as millions packed into lower Manhattan for the estimated largest ticker tape parade in Big Apple history, dramatic video showed.
Simone Kelly, an off-duty EMT from New Jersey, and Peter Shrieve-Don are among a small group being hailed as heroes for their quick thinking and administering Narcan to rescue the distressed man who was perched above the World Trade Center Subway station on Thursday.
Shrieve-Don had been filming the Knicks’ historic championship parade when he spotted the unidentified man lose consciousness and raced to alert a nearby NYPD officer, according to video posted to Instagram.
“I went up because the guy went out hard, no one was doing anything, and there wasn’t time,” Shrieve-Don wrote in the post.
Shrieve-Don told officers that the man was “passed out in his vomit,” but the first responders didn’t budge, forcing the camera operator to scale the structure to get to the man in distress.
“They’re gonna tell you to get off,” one woman told Shrieve-Don.
“Well then, he’s going to die,” he responded. “Damn, we’re really following the rules out here.”
Shrieve-Don defied the officer’s order to stop climbing the structure and found the individual passed out with his head slumped backwards, nearly completely upside down.
The heroic Knicks fan began shaking the man, telling him to “get up, bro,” as thousands of people below watched intensely.
“Once I did get to him, it was clear that it was serious enough to require someone who knew more than me – Simmy Kelly, you are a hero and you forever have my gratitude,” Shrieve-Don wrote.
Kelly and a small group of fans managed to climb up the glass structure to render aid to the man.
Kelly, who is stationed with the South Orange Rescue Squad, had made it through the crowd and on to the platform, where she said she was “medical” and took control of the intense scene.
Kelly administered a dose of Narcan spray into the man’s nose before giving him sternum rubs, according to the footage captured by Shrieve-Don.
The man gained consciousness after the hit of the life-saving spray and attempted to embrace and kiss Kelly multiple times as she asked him what he had taken.
Several more people had climbed up the structure and helped carry the man down to the awaiting FDNY paramedics.
The man was strapped to a stretcher and rolled away from the scene. His condition was not immediately known.
The Post has reached out to the FDNY.
Shrieve-Don praised Kelly as a “hero” following the terrifying ordeal.
“Sometimes, if you see something, DO something,” Shrieve-Don said. “I’m glad there were people who knew what they were doing (not me). I do love this city. Knicks in 5.”
Kelly reposted multiple angles of her daring rescue to her Instagram profile and is hoping her viral fame helps her get into medical school.
“Instagram engagement is great but who can get my name to medical school admission committees,” Kelly wrote in a post after her rescue went viral.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
