Connecticut State Police Troop A was alerted to an accident on I-84 West near Exit 8 around 5:45 pm June 14. The caller reported a motorcycle accident with injuries. Before the first CSP Trooper arrived at that scene, two Good Samaritans had already stopped and were applying first aid to the motorcycle operator.

Patrick Doherty of Sandy Hook and Edward Bell of Southbury had, according to a letter from CSP Sgt Shawn Prusinowsky shared with The Newtown Bee, “stopped on their own accord and were attempting to stop the bleeding as best as they could by using a bandana as a tourniquet.”

The male operator of the motorcycle was found lying in the median, next to the guardrail, with “serious injuries to his left leg with severe bleeding,” the letter noted.

Upon arrival at the scene, CSP Trooper Anlly E. Diaz retrieved a tourniquet from his cruiser, and “Mr Doherty assisted him in the application of the tourniquet,” also according to the letter.

“The actions of Mr Doherty, Mr Bell, and Trooper Diaz without a doubt saved the operator’s life,” Sgt Prusinowski’s letter concluded. “They are to be commended for their quick thinking and selfless actions.”

On October 23, the three men were among a group of CSP troopers, police officers, firefighters, and civilians commended during a ceremony held at Connecticut State Police Training Academy in Meriden.

Trooper Diaz was presented with The Medal for Lifesaving, and Mr Doherty and Mr Bell each received Commissioner’s Recognition Award certificates.

Mr Doherty, 20, was joined at the awards ceremony by his parents, Sharon and Dan; his brother, Joseph; his grandmother, Marlene Doherty; his girlfriend, Maria Tenore, and her parents; and a few family friends.

The afternoon following the ceremony, Mr Doherty recalled the accident.

“It was a hot day, and we had just finished paving,” he said. Mr Doherty works for Greenway Industries in Danbury. He and another employee were traveling from a construction yard in Brookfield, where they had dropped off paving equipment they had been using that day.

They were headed back to Danbury when, after merging onto I-84 East from Route 7, Mr Doherty noticed cars parked in the median.

“There were no ambulances, no police,” he said.

The vehicle he was in parked along the southern shoulder of the interstate, and Mr Doherty “ran across three lanes of interstate traffic,” he said, where he found the injured motorcyclist.

“He was face up, conscious and alert, but bleeding very heavily from his leg,” according to Mr Doherty, a firefighter with Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue.

Mr Bell was already there. “He had a first-aid kit,” Mr Doherty said. “I asked for gloves and a tourniquet, and EMT scissors. I cut open his pants leg and noticed he was bleeding profusely, so I applied the tourniquet to slow the bleeding.”

When Trooper Diaz arrived on the scene, he also had a tourniquet, which Mr Doherty said was also applied.

“By then the ambulance and the fire department arrived, so they loaded him up and took him to the hospital,” said Mr Doherty.

Due to HIPPA laws, most Good Samaritans would not know how their patient fared. The family of the motorcyclist contacted Connecticut State Police, however, and asked to be put in touch with the men who helped their family member.

A few weeks after the accident, Mr Doherty learned that the motorcyclist had lived through the trauma, but lost his lower leg, from the knee down.

“His family called me, and told me he wanted me to know that he was back home in Pennsylvania, he was learning to walk again, and he was doing all right,” Mr Doherty said. “He was on blood thinners, they told me, so if I hadn’t applied the tourniquet he would have bled out in the middle of the highway.”

The motorcyclist, Mr Doherty also learned, had been traveling on I-84 West, reportedly returning to his home following a “Christian motorcycle convention,” he said. The man told his family, who in turn told Mr Doherty, that a tractor-trailer had hit its brakes in front of him, leaving him to make a split-second decision: crash into the truck or “head for the median and hope for the best,” according to Mr Doherty.

The Sandy Hook resident credits his time with the local fire company with helping him know what to do that afternoon.

“I’ve trained through the fire service,” he said, adding he is a certified Emergency Medical Responder. Mr Doherty admitted to being “nervous at first” while approaching the motorcyclist back in June, “but then my training kicked in.”