A Michigan sanitation worker is thanking his lucky stars... and a heroic teen officer after surviving a gruesome injury on the job.
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Grosse Pointe Farms sanitation employee Rick Braun was having his standard-issue morning working his job on Sept. 4. However, that changed abruptly when a careless resident threw away a large piece of glass in their trash.
"I threw the piece of glass, and then I thought, 'Oh, that hurt — but not bad. That was weird.' And then I went to do something else, and I felt the warm sensation of blood on the outside of my arm," Braun recalled to Detroit outlet WXYZ.
His co-workers, Maxwell Roeske and Scott Foster, saw the alarming injury and sprang into action. Roeske wrapped his shirt around Braun's gushing arm and dialed 911. Meanwhile, Foster used his belt to create a makeshift tourniquet.
That's when 19-year-old Grosse Pointe Farms Public Safety Officer Paul Lyke entered the scene, according to Grosse Pointe News.
The teen, who only graduated high school last year and became an officer this past June, immediately assessed the grave situation. "I said to myself, 'What would I do if this was my father?" Lyke told WXYZ he remembered thinking as he took in the sanitation worker's devastating injury.
"When I looked at the injury, I noticed a very deep laceration right here to his brachial artery," Lyke recalled, sounding a bit like a character from The Pitt. The resourceful teen then applied yet another tourniquet to Braun's gushing arm.
Hero Teen Makes Bold Choice to Save Injured Sanitation Worker
As valuable time slipped away, Lyke realized he would have to make a hefty choice: whether to wait for an ambulance... or transport the gravely wounded man himself.
"We don't do transports," Lyke insisted to the Grosse Pointe News. "It's a liability for us to transport in the event that something does happen. So for me, it was a little bit of a risk to take him to the hospital, but I would rather take the risk and help him than (risk a different outcome)."
However, taking in the near-impossible amount of blood Braun was losing, the teen's he choice became easy.
"I'm looking at the shirt [tied around his arm], and I'm processing — the shirt shouldn't have been maroon or almost black. It should've been white," he told Grosse Pointe News.
It seems Lyke's decision to go against protocol was a good one. Braun is on his way to a full recovery. Meanwhile, Lyke may reportedly be up for a public safety award.
That said, other than admitting he carries more tourniquets while on duty, Lyke insisted the harrowing experience hasn't changed the way he looks at the job.
"You don't really think about it. It's just work, and it's what I signed up for, and that's what I'm going to do," the humble teen told the outlet.
