Together, they helped save McCloskey’s life.
Monday, September 7, 2015

~~About 35 members of Ironworkers Local 451 were gathered in the middle of North King Street, just north of East 12th, shortly before 10 a.m. Monday. In about 15 minutes, Wilmington’s annual Labor Day parade would begin.
Suddenly, Billy McCloskey collapsed. The retired iron worker and past president of the Delaware Building Trades Council was in cardiac arrest.
McCloskey had stopped breathing, lost his pulse, and might have died right then and there. But he was in luck. Standing nearby was a volunteer firefighter with an emergency medical background who rushed to his side. Down the street, out of earshot but alerted by a Wilmington police sergeant on the scene, was an officer also certified as a paramedic.
Kenny Veid, the firefighter, knew McCloskey well – the older man had mentored Veid when he was coming up through the trade and the union and was also a good friend of his father, Kenny Sr. Cpl. Dennis Leahy, a seven-year veteran of the Wilmington force, didn’t know either man.
Together, they helped save McCloskey’s life.
“We were about to start the parade. It was a quarter to 10 or so,” said James Maravelias, the trades council’s current president. He and McCloskey walked over to take up 451’s banner to carry in the parade.
“I shook his hand,” Maravelias said. “I give his wife the other end, turned to say something to Jeff [Hendrickson, 451’s business manager]. The next thing I know, she’s saying, ‘Billy, Billy!’ And he’s at my feet. I mean, it was that quick.”

Veid’s stepson, Travis Pittman, was standing nearby with his fiancée, Sheeda Wright, and Veid. Someone shouted for the police, and Pittman stepped toward the commotion. Veid hadn’t seen McCloskey fall and called to Pittman, “Is there a fight or something goin’ on?” Veid, who volunteers at the Belvedere Fire Company in Newport, quickly followed.
Several Wilmington officers rushed over, followed by Veid, who once held an emergency medical responders’s license but had let the certification lapse. Veid tapped one of the officers on the shoulder and said, “ ‘I’m a Belvedere firefighter, sir.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, come right on in.’ ”
When the other officers and Veid leaned over, Veid was shocked to see that it was McCloskey lying on the ground, trembling. “He helped break me in when I was an apprentice,” Veid said. “My very first job, he was my foreman, you know. I was trying to stay focused. I didn’t want to become part of the problem.”
A few feet away, Sgt. David Rosenblum had keyed his portable radio and called for Leahy, knowing he was a paramedic. Leahy, who had just moved his black police cruiser to North French and East 12th streets to block traffic for the parade, sped back around the block and leaped out.

“I walked up; he’s lying on his left side,” Leahy said. “He’s breathing, but he’s not breathing too well.” McCloskey was starting to turn blue. Cyanotic, in medical terms. “So we rolled him over on his back, open his airway, and he’s not breathing,” Leahy said. “He didn’t have a pulse.”
Veid, who he didn’t know, “started CPR while I ran and got the AED [a portable defibrillator] and mask out of my truck.” Two other Wilmington officers also helped: Master Cpl. Anthony Johnson assisted with the mask, while Sgt. James Karshner set up the AED. Leahy and Veid took turns with the strenuous chest compressions.
 “Just kind of a team effort,” said Leahy. “Doing CPR, anybody’s going to be exhausted ... you rotate out.”
In between compression sessions – about every two minutes – the team administered AED shocks. Three, all told, Leahy said. Sometimes, McCloskey seemed to move on his own. But the movements were largely involuntary, Leahy said.
 “He was fightin’,” Leahy said. “His body was trying to fight. But he was still in what we call lethal rhythm, which is ventricular fibrillation. And that rhythm, if not treated promptly ...”
“To be honest with you, I didn’t think he was going to make it,” Veid said. Leahy is used to performing CPR while on duty. But, he said, “It’s kind of different when you’re a bystander.”
He had experience in that mode, as well. A month earlier, when another officer fell down next to him during the biennial Fraternal Order of Police convention in Pittsburgh, he and a Pennsylvania officer who was an emergency medical technician teamed up to perform CPR while someone else fetched an AED.
“He was recovering, the last I heard,” Leahy said. “Just the right place, right time, I guess.”
“It’s the lay person that really buys the person time, because brain death can occur within minutes,” said Cpl. Abigail Haas of New Castle County Emergency Medical Service Division, or EMSD.
McCloskey, however, wasn’t recovering. The minutes dragged on. Wilmington firefighters arrived at 9:52 a.m. EMTs from St. Francis Hospital followed at 9:53, and a minute later, New Castle County Paramedics arrived. Veid stepped out of the way.
“I was so relieved when I seen the paramedics,” he said. “I was gettin’ kind of tired.”
Despite the collective effort, it wasn’t going well. When the paramedics stepped in, McCloskey wasn’t breathing and had no pulse. They initiated “advanced life support procedures,” which can include intubation and administration of adrenaline, all while continuing CPR. His pulse returned intermittently. About a half-hour after he’d fallen, McCloskey was lifted onto the stretcher. But as the ambulance left for Christiana, McCloskey was in cardiac arrest, according to EMSD’s Sgt. Michael McColley. Yet en route, McCloskey came out of it. The paramedics restored his pulse, and McCloskey arrived at Christiana with “good vital signs,” McColley said. He credited a rapid call to 911, bystander CPR, AED application and administration of advanced life support with bringing McCloskey back.
“I knew it wasn’t good,” Maravelias said after a subsequent visit to the hospital, reflecting on McCloskey’s collapse. “When I asked last night, they said, ‘He was done.’ And from what I understand, they didn’t even get him to the hospital, and he was talking to the paramedics. They said he couldn’t shut up.”
He was still chattering in the Christiana Emergency Room, where Leahy briefly visited McCloskey. “He was awake and alert and talking to me,” Leahy said. “It’s a good feeling.”
McCloskey, who underwent quadruple-bypass surgery Monday, was as of Wednesday afternoon in “good” condition, said Hendrickson, citing a McCloskey family member.
“So it’s, it’s ...” Maravelias searched for the words a day after McCloskey’s collapse and recovery. “I don’t know what I witnessed yesterday. But I witnessed something.”
“It was amazing,” Wright said. “To see that firsthand was amazing.”
“We worked together like a team,” Veid said. “And by the grace of God, he came back.”

Posted by Assistant Chief Clark via Delawareonline.com

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