Kyle Lotay: PIC: Norfolk Police.
Three Norwich police officers who battled to bring a 37-year-old man back from the brink of death have received top life-saving honours.
PC Kyle Lotay, together with colleagues PC Liam Nicklin and PC Rob Wells, were called to a property in Magdalen Street, Norwich, after a man collapsed and stopped breathing.
They found the man, who had collapsed following a disturbance at the house, unconscious and not breathing on a small landing at the top of a hall stairway.
Despite problems caused by a drunk and hostile person in the property, the officers started performing cardiac pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and continued their life-saving efforts until ambulance staff arrived.
The perseverance of the police officers, in extremely difficult conditions, helped ensure that the man survived his ordeal.
All three officers are to receive Royal Humane Society Resuscitation Certificates following their life-saving efforts in the early hours of September 29 last year.
PC Lotay, who is now an acting sergeant at Earlham Police Station, said his colleagues were first on scene with him arriving at the address to assist them.
The 33-year-old, who has been a police officer since 2009, transferring to Norfolk from Essex in 2012, said their first aid training is refreshed annually - although it was the first time he was called on to do CPR.
He said: “It's the first time in 10 years I've had to it.
“What you cannot appreciate from the training is how exhausting CPR is – by the time you've done two to three repetitions of it you're exhausted.
He said the ambulance service arrived pretty quickly although it “seemed like a life time”.
Acting Sgt Lota has not seen the patient since but was delighted he survived. He said he felt really privileged to have been put forward for the award, but insisted emergency services like police and ambulance service face scenes like this every day all over the country and said the recognition was for all of them.