Saturday, March 08, 2008
Deputies credited with saving life of choking man
In Abingdon for the Morva trial, the officers noticed the man having breathing difficulties.
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ABINGDON -- A group of Montgomery County Sheriff's Office deputies in town for William Morva's trial is being credited with saving the life of a former Christiansburg man they saw choking at a restaurant.
Master Deputy Hank Partin, Investigator Matt Wilburn and Deputy Jason Cochran had just sat down for dinner Thursday night at El Patio, a Mexican restaurant on Lee Highway in Bristol, when Wilburn noticed that a man who had been coughing had his hand on his chest and was turning blue.
Wilburn said he thought the man, who was sitting alone in a booth, was having a heart attack. Then he realized he was choking.
"We jumped up and ran to him," Wilburn said.
Partin grabbed the man and pushed him toward Wilburn. Wilburn and Cochran held onto him while Partin performed the Heimlich maneuver and Circuit Court Clerk Erica Williams called 911.
After Partin performed the Heimlich three times, a piece of chicken popped out of the man's throat.
The man, James Ratliff, said he had been eating a chicken chalupa when he got some pepper in his throat.
As he tried to cough it up, he said, he took a breath.
"But I still had food in my mouth," he said. "I apparently sucked that down my windpipe.
"Next thing I remember was looking up at one of the deputies there and the other one still had ahold of me."
Ratliff said he's grateful the deputies were there.
"They were all over it, I mean immediate," he said.
When everyone got to talking, Ratliff said, they realized that they had a connection: Ratliff once lived and worked as a mail carrier in Christiansburg, where the deputies all work. They even knew some of the same people. Ratliff, 60, said he moved to Bristol in 1990.
At the Washington County Courthouse on Friday, the deputies were being called heroes.
"They saved this guy's life," said Montgomery County Lt. Gary Chandler. "For whatever reason, they were in the right place at the right time."
"That's what we're supposed to do. That's our job," Wilburn said.
"They played it down last night, too," Ratliff said Friday. "They just played it down like it was nothing. And then we just talked like we was old friends."
