A family errand to a large retail store turned into a dramatic rescue when an Intermountain data architect and his wife responded to a woman who fell in the aisle and started having a seizure.
Bethany and Kyle Bell
Kyle Bell, his wife, and their children were browsing different aisles of the Centerville, Utah, store when a noise startled Kyle.
“I heard this loud crash and my first instinct was, ‘Oh no. What have my kids broken?’” he says. “My wife and I were in adjacent aisles, but we came out of those aisles into the center aisle. She looked at me and said, ‘Kyle, there is a woman on the ground seizing.’”
Bethany Bell appeared stunned and confused about how to process what was happening or what to do next, according to Kyle, but because he’d taken an EMT course during his last year in high school, he knew what to do.
Within seconds they were at the woman’s side, assessing the situation. Kyle instructed his wife to protectively monitor the woman while he called 911.
“I told them, ‘this is the location where we are, and I need EMS dispatched right away,’” he says. “I gave them the details and said, ‘The woman is exhibiting physical symptoms of a seizure. Also, evident trauma to the head is visible. The trauma could be from the fall or from the seizure itself.’”
“It was all so fast, all so chaotic,” Kyle says. “At the time I thought, ‘This woman is going to aspirate if she remains on her back.’”
He recommended he and his wife turn the individual on her side. The dispatch team agreed, and Kyle coached his wife in how to do this. Together they caringly stabilized the woman and protectively supported her head and torso.
The dispatcher directed Kyle to stay on the line until local law enforcement and the EMS arrived. Kyle, who works in Digital Technology Services, had received practical training in emergency services through an emergency department and with an ambulance crew during his EMT course at Davis Applied Technical College in northern Utah.
Kyle recalls thinking, “OK, what else in my training have I been taught for a moment like this?”
“I looked at a bystander, and I said, ‘You need to go to the front door to meet with EMS when they arrive and bring the people here,’” he says. “‘And then I looked at another person, and I said, ‘You need to clear this aisle because this person could potentially get injured from things around.’”
On the way to the front to meet the emergency personnel, the individual also alerted store leaders who initiated an employee response team to help at the scene. They blocked the aisle from view and cleared a path for emergency responders.
Another store employee tended to the Bell’s three young children who were witnessing the scene, taking them to wait in the toy department while their parents helped the woman.
Law enforcement arrived about three minutes after being dispatched, and EMS followed less than a minute later. The woman became alert as they arrived but was in a panicked and confused state. Kyle credits his wife with handling those reactions well.
“Here I am a person in data and analytics for a health care company having had prior training, but it’s been about 10 years since I’ve practiced it,” says Kyle. “The skills I learned and the training I acquired came back in the snap of a finger.”
“I would say my wife is a hero as well because we did it together,” he says. “It was a neat experience. At the end of the day, we ended up saving a woman’s life.”
Afterward Kyle asked his wife and his children how they felt about the experience to ensure each member of the family could process the situation in his or her own way rather than internalize and hold onto it.
“What kept me going through the whole scenario is a moment I had,” Kyle says. “I lost my mother due to mental health illness a number of years ago. The thought came into my mind, ‘This is somebody’s loved one. And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure I do the right thing at the right time so this person can return home.’ In the stress and the chaos and the shock I was going through, that's what kept me going.”