Cameron Kirkconnell conta como salvou um amigo disparando para ele

"Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008
Sad but rewarding story from yesterday diving. I am going to write it all out in full but am stil la bit shook up and need to help out his family in the hospital today.
Was diving in 180 ft of water with a friend Steve Bennet who is a 21 year old from Tarpon Springs. We were diving on an area of broken bottom in strong current from an anchored boat. Making one dive down and getting swept away each time before swimming back to the boat and resting to make another he dove to down and was on his way back to the surface, I watched and he looked fine and regretfully left the surface myself and headed down. I dove and while I was down at 75 ft his gun floated past me, i immediately looked around and saw my friend upside down drifting unconcious and convulsing about 60 ft away at that same depth.
With a strong current and no one else in the water and one chance I ditched my weight belt and swam hard towards him extending the gun to shoot him. I was well past my breath hold limit and knew that there was no point of us both dying but there was only this once brief glimmer of hope to even get his body. I couldn't get close enough to be confident of penetrating his meat in his leg shooting him in the fin headed for the surface and was as close as I have ever been to blacking out in my life. before the dive, by pure luck we had secured my gun to a huge fishing reel on the boat in anticipation of me shooting a 100 lb Cubera snapper which we had seen at depth.
I screamed for the boat to cut the anchor line, reel up my gun because it had Steve on it.
Suffice to say despite my yelling of orders and trying to tell them quickly that steve had drown and we were about to have to perform CPR on him they had no idea the gravity of the situation.
we pulled him to the boat and he was completely limp, bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears and was completely blue.
I put him on the back of the boat and checked his vitals immediately found a faint pulse and no breathing. From freedive and medical training, opened his airway while talking confidently and softly to him and blowing lightly across his cheeks just under his his to trigger the breathing reflex like a new born. within the first minute and just before I was going to start rescue breaths, some foamy blood leaked from the side of his mouth and i turned him on his side and supported him so as to ease the flow of fluid from his lungs.
a short while later he sputtered a bit and was able to take in what i would estimate was a 1% capacity breath.
20 seconds later he made another one and expelled more foamy blood from his mouth and nose. with each sputter he expelled more and within 10 minutes he could take about a 15% breath but was still completely unresponsive and from what i could see in a comatose state with only his body barely functioning.
The whole time we are on the radio with the coast guard and are 70 miles off shore.
After 15 minutes he started to slurr and for the first time was able to squeeze my hand slightly letting me know that he could hear me.
From there i sat him in my arms and over the next 20 minutes as we sped in as fast as the boat would go he regained more and more motor functions and was able to talk more and more. 45 minutes from the time it happened and still 55 miles off shore we rendezvous with a coast guard helicopter and airlifted him to Tampa General hospital.
He has severe lung damage but is alive and has no noticeable brain damage. He is stable and will live a lot happier having not been shot in the leg or having sunk to 180 feet never to be seen again. The best shot I have ever made!
This is the single heaviest thing that was ever happened to me or any diver I've ever talked to. Throughout the ordeal if i was looking at it from the outside i would have told anyone with a 99% certainty there was no chance he would ever regain conciousness or be able to be recovered from that depth or the fin would have stayed on or the second diver would have been able to get him or the fin dould not have split. Once in the boat... the worst sight I've ever seen. NO one should be able to live through that. the human body is an amazing thing and that he came back is a miracle.
Thank your lucky stars tonight because it is possible for everything to align perfectly and work out sometimes
Cam"