School receptionist from East Wittering praised for saving life of 92-year-old driver

Tracey Holcombe, a receptionist at Birdham Primary School, has been awarded a top national honour by the Royal Humane Society for assisting the man, who crashed after suffering a heart attack at the wheel.

The 49-year-old mother-of-two said: “I’m not a hero, I just did what anyone else would have done.

“Hopefully someone would have done it for my parents.”

Tracey had finished work early that day in early November last year, and was planning to see some friends with her husband Mark that afternoon.

As she was driving along the B2179 near Chichester at around noon, she noticed the car coming towards her was drifting into her lane.

“I moved, and I heard him crash into the barrier,” she said.

Tracey spun her car around, pulled up and ran to his car where – unable to get into the driver’s seat, she climbed into the passenger side.

Recalling the ‘horrible’ experience, she said she heard the man give ‘a horrendous groan’ and feared he was dying.

She dialled 999 and, placing her phone on the dashboard, followed the instructions of the paramedic to administer cardiac pulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Tracey said she quickly became worn out, adding: “You’re giving everything you have in your body to keep doing what the ambulance crew are telling you.”

Eventually she looked up and was ‘so grateful’ to see a lorry driver, who had parked in front of the car.

This was Keith Galmoye of Havant, who took over the CPR until the paramedics arrived shortly after.

“By then I was just in pieces,” said Tracey. “I was a right mess for quite a few days after that. I kept bursting into tears.”

She said she was relieved to hear that the motorist went on to make a remarkable recovery and was released from hospital just a few days later, and was touched to receive a thank you card from his wife.

Tracey had some knowledge of CPR, as she had been a first aider at a school she worked at a long time ago.

But she believes her interest in watching emergency response programmes on TV may have contributed to her swift response: “It must have gone in somewhere.”

Both Tracey and Keith were awarded Royal Humane Society Resuscitation Certificates, and were praised by society chairman Andrew Chapman as being ‘the right people in the right place at the right time’.

He said: “They both richly deserve the awards they are to receive.

“There is little doubt that without their swift help, the man would not have survived.

“The sooner CPR can be started the better the chances are that the person will survive.

“They were on the scene immediately and there was no delay between the man suffering the heart attack and crashing and the start of CPR.

“They were Good Samaritans who were the right people in the right place at the right time.

“This is yet another case which emphasises the value of as many people, not just members of the emergency services, learning how to administer CPR.

“I’m sure that most people who learn the technique probably hope they will never be called on to use it but, as this incident shows it can, as it did here, make the difference between life and death.”

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