The story of the hero Hastings-on-Hudson police officer who jumped off a Saw Mill Parkway overpass to help a boy who'd been injured made news around the country. There was one mystery. The identify of another hero who went to the boy's help.
Mystery solved: Her name is SPC Nicole McKenzie.
McKenzie served active duty in the Army for three years in a medical battalion and is now in the New York Army National Guard. In the guard, she learned combat lifesaver training, in which soldiers learn to administer first-line care until a medic or surgeon arrives. That Aug. 3 on the Saw Mill, she took charge.
She was on her way home from Yonkers, where she works for a logistics battalion and saw the commotion by the overpass.
"I can see people pulled over at that overpass and I saw (Hastings-on-Hudson police officer Jessie Ferreira Cavallo), so I pulled my car over," McKenzie said.
She looked down, and saw the boy was on his left side. His face was bloody.
She asked a man who was standing there to get her medical kit from her trunk and she and Cavallo sprang into action.
They climbed over the guardrail to the right of the overpass, scaled a chain-link fence and dropped about 10 feet, she said.
"From there, we're running down this hill and we saw the boy laying on his left side. I looked at (Cavallo) and said, 'Alright, you're going to take his head and hold it, and I'm going to roll his body onto his back and we're going to do it in one motion," McKenzie said. "One, two, three and we rolled him. When we rolled him, he made a noise."
That was a good sign.
"When he made a noise, I knew he was conscious on some level," she said
Once the boy was on his back, McKenzie said he was able to speak.
"I told him, 'You look fine, dude. Ladies love scars. Don't worry about it. You'll be OK.' And he laughed," McKenzie said. "I didn't want to freak him out because that's a great way to make him go into shock."
But he needed medical attention.
"I could tell off the bat that he had a concussion. When I shined the flashlight in his eyes, his pupils didn't dilate and he couldn't follow the light," she said. And "his nose was probably broken. His face was really bloody."
She checked her medical kit, which the man on the overpass had tossed down, but she didn't have any splints, so she had to climb back up to her car.
"I told (Cavallo) to keep talking to the boy and make sure he's alert and not fading in and out," McKenzie said.
She and Cavallo worked together to make a neck brace out of the splints, and also splinted his left arm and leg. McKenzie also cleaned his nose and cleared his airway.
By this time, the ambulance had arrived. Once the boy was inside, she packed her gear and left.
Her job was done.
