SHOREHAM, N.Y.(CBSNewYork) — A Long Island teenager who collapsed and went into
cardiac arrest after getting hit in the chest by a line drive
over the weekend is now home and recovering after being revived by
an automated external defibrillator.
“It’s a miracle. Honestly, I feel like the luckiest
person alive,” said 15-year-old Jack Crowley.
Crowley has scrapes on his face, but he’s not
complaining. He’s alive thanks to an AED and some quick thinking.
“Really dizzy, shortness of breath, and then I had to go
to my knees, I just couldn’t stand up,” Crowley recalled.
He was pitching to his younger brother at a Rocky
Point batting cage on Saturday when he stepped out from behind the protective
screen for a second. That’s when a line drive hit him in the chest, Gusoff
reported.
Jack stopped breathing. Onlookers tried CPR and his
parents feared the worst.
“I thought my son was dead,” said John Crowley.
“You feel like your child is dying in your arms, and you
know it’s happening. And I wasn’t going to let him go, I kept looking at him
because I thought he was leaving me,” said mom Nancy Crowley.
That’s when an off-duty Suffolk County police sergeant
ran for a defibrillator in the field house.
It delivered a shock and in moments, Jack had regained
consciousness and opened his eyes.
“Two to three minutes later, he was talking,”
said John Crowley. “I just can’t say enough to the heroes who were there,
who saved my son.”
The ninth-grade is now home from the hospital, benched
for six weeks but grateful for the machine that made all the difference.
“It saved my life and I think it should be on every
field,” Jack said.
Jack’s mother credits another mother with this miraculous
save. A mother who lost her own son on a Long Island athletic field 15
years ago. The Louis Acompora Foundation has helped put thousands of AEDs
on fields everywhere.
“That mother’s grief saved my child,” said Nancy Crowley.
Now, Jack wants to become a doctor to pay it forward.
