Just One Day After Completing CPR Training, Heroic 16-year-old Saves Her Friend’s Life

CPR, it’s an essential skill to learn but one you hope you never have to use. The fear and panic one feels when having to apply the mechanics on another human can be traumatizing.

It is a seemingly simple rhythmic exercise. But with the adrenaline, and fear that one feels when faced with the fact they have to perform CPR in a real-life situation can complicate the situation to suffocatingly stressful levels. Suffice it to say, it takes a particular type of person to jump into action and save someone’s life.

That’s what makes the following story all the more heroic and impressive.

The Crash

A’zarria Simmons, Torri’ell Norwood, and two of their friends were driving on a day that seemed like any other. That was until Torri’ell’s driver’s side of the car was blind-sided-ly struck by a speeding driver.

The crash launched the car, Norwood, and the three passengers into a stranger’s yard, where the vehicle barrel-rolled into a tree. Unable to pry the now-crushed driver’s-side door open, 16-year old Norwood had to climb through the broken window. As she looked around, she noticed that two of her friends were unscathed and able to get out of the vehicle under their own volition. However, moments later, Torri’ell noticed her friend A’zarria Simmons was still in her seat, unresponsive.

What they would later find out was that Simmons had sustained a life-threatening blunt force trauma head injury.

Amazingly enough, Torri’ell was able to calmly check her unconscious friend’s vital signs and perform lifesaving CPR techniques on the very person she learned them on the previous day.

After 30 chest compressions and two rescue breaths, the 16-year old was thankfully able to revive her friend before paramedics appeared on the scene.

Norwood learned her lifesaving CPR skills at Lakewood High School’s Athletic Lifestyle Management Academy from her instructor, Erika Miller. Miller later said she was amazed by her all-too-recent pupil’s heroic performance.

lifesaving skills at Lakewood High School’s Athletic Lifestyle Management Academy. Her instructor, Erika Miller, was both awed and astonished by her student’s stellar performance.

Miller stated that the overwhelming majority of her students never have to apply their CPR training until their in nursing or school or after they become EMTs.

“But not while they were still a student of mine or definitely not within 24 hours,” she told CNN, adding proudly: “This is what every teacher dreams of, you know, that somebody listens, pays attention, learns something.”

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The crashed car/Torri’ell Norwood

When Simmons woke up in the hospital, she didn’t remember the accident, but there’s little doubt she’ll ever forget the BFF who’d paid attention in class—and saved her life.