Off-duty first responders help save man from overdose at Knicks parade

LOWER MANHATTAN (WABC) -- It was a race against the clock in a sea of people celebrating the champion Knicks.

The small but mighty group of people fought for a man's life on top of the World Trade Center subway elevator entrance.

"He wasn't doing well. I looked up, I watched the man start vomiting, I watched his eyes roll back," said Peter Shrieve-Don, "I'm just desperate trying to get the guy up. I'm just trying to wake him up."

Shrieve-Don, who has no medical experience says he saw what appeared to be a man suffering a medical emergency during the Knicks Parade on Thursday, and despite suggestions not to climb the structure, he did anyway.

"We're all just going to do this dance here we got - we're saying 'somebody, somebody, somebody!' And sometimes that somebody's got to be you," Shrieve-Don said.

Simone Kelly, a volunteer with the South Orange Rescue Squad, who was off-duty enjoying the parade, sprung into action along with another anonymous first responder.

"When we looked in his eyes, he had pinpoint pupils, which is at telltale sign of an opiate overdose or opiate use in general," said Kelly.

Kelly says he was unresponsive and barely breathing. Then someone in the crowd tossed up a lifesaver - a dose of Narcan.

Paramedics arrived a short while after that, but helping people is not a foreign concept to Kelly.

"But having two thousand people watching is definitely, you know, not what I'm used to. This roar came from the crowd - I got goosebumps," Kelly said.

Shrieve-Don and Kelly are hoping the man make a full recovery while spreading awareness.

"I hope having so many eyes shows that we have an epidemic going on," Kelly said.

"I hope you don't need the whole world to do right all the time. You just need enough people to do right enough of the time," added Shrieve-Don.