A 15-year-old boy crashed his ATV while racing another teenager in southwest Philly Saturday afternoon. NBC10’s Randy Gylllenhaal speaks to a trauma nurse who heard the accident and rushed to perform CPR on the boy.
Two nurses rushed to help a teenage boy who crashed while racing an ATV on a southwest Philly street Saturday afternoon.
The 15-year-old boy, who was not wearing a helmet, crashed near the intersection of 58th Street and Cobbs Creek Parkway around 2 p.m., officials said.
"All I know for certain is that he didn't have a pulse," said Bridget Joynes, a trauma nurse.
Joynes heard the crash while inside a nearby church and rushed to help.
She joined neighbors, including another nurse, who already began performing CPR on the boy.
"He was bleeding from his nose," Joynes said. "Once he lost his pulse, we started CPR, switched off until EMS arrived and they jumped in."
The victim was rushed to Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania in critical condtion.
Local
Breaking news and the stories that matter to your neighborhood.
The injured boy and another teenager were racing the ATVS -- even swerving between other cars on the road -- before the crash occurred.
"All of a sudden I hear a crash, I looked in my left rearview mirror and saw an ATV flipped over," said Feliz Carbone, a driver who witnessed the accident. "I saw a kid laying on the ground bleeding from the head."
"They were in the street. They were definitely racing," Carbone said. "They tried to go around me, and the guy in the back of the other ATV clipped his friend's back tire and flipped over."
Two other crashes -- both deadly -- involving dirt bikes and ATVs in the city occurred in the past two weeks. A 38-year-old man was killed when his ATV flipped and landed on him in the city's Mayfair section Thursday. A 19-year-old died in the same section of the city a week earlier when his dirt bike collided with an SUV.
It is illegal to operate or park an ATV on any public street, sidewalk, park or recreational facility in the City of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia Police are planning a major crackdown on the illegal vehicles. A day-long operation to get ATVs and dirt bikes off the streets is in the works, police said.
