The Patriot News
WELLSVILLE, Pa. — Several boaters are credited with helping save the life of a Wellsville man who was stricken Sunday on the Susquehanna River at Wrightsville Beach.
Brenda Hugendubler, 53, had planned on a relaxing summer afternoon Sunday when her husband, Jack, 54, collapsed about 2 p.m. at the wheel of their boat.
“He slumped completely over, had a convulsion and slumped over the wheel,” she said Tuesday. “I screamed at the top of my lungs, and they responded in seconds.
“I didn’t know any of those people at all. I don’t think he would have made it without them. “I was a mess, hysterical.”
“They” included two off-duty police officers, a respiratory technician, a nursing student and another boater, she said.
Braxton Ditty, a Newberry Twp. patrolman, had accepted an invitation from Andy Paul, a patrolman from Fairview Twp., to spend the afternoon boating.
“Andy and I were wading in the water and heard Brenda yelling, ‘Help me! Help me!’” Ditty said.
Paul and Ditty, followed by Ditty’s girlfriend, Lindsay Good, an emergency room technician and nursing student, swam to the boat, where they lowered Hugendubler from the captain’s chair to the deck, Ditty said.
“We weren’t able to locate a pulse on him,” Ditty said. So they began compressing Hugendubler’s chest.
“It was just a few [compressions], two or three, and he regained consciousness,” Ditty said.
There were then five people on the boat, Ditty said. A man identified as Phil Weaver of Maytown, Lancaster County, and an unidentified woman who works as a respiratory technician had joined the other three.
“Phil took the reins and moved the boat to shore, and Andy contacted 911,” Ditty said. The respiratory technician, Good and the officers tended to Hugendubler on the way to meet the ambulance, Ditty said.
Hugendubler was taken to Memorial Hospital in Spring Garden Twp., where he was admitted to the intensive-care unit, Brenda Hugendubler said. He was released Tuesday night.
While she and her husband were on the way to the hospital, Weaver, Ditty and Paul took the Hugendublers’ boat out of the water, placed it on a trailer and secured it in a lot, Brenda Hugendubler said.
Jack Hugendubler, who works at the New Cumberland Army Depot in Fairview Twp., said that after two days of tests, doctors aren’t sure what happened to him, but that the fast response from his rescuers certainly helped him.
“The quick response that those good people gave to me getting oxygen going to my heart” minimized damage, he said.
He said he’s going to take the rest of the week off work to recover and to see a couple of specialists.
Ditty credited his training and experience for the quick response by himself and the others.
“A nurse, a police officer — you’re never off duty,” he said.
“You always have the training in how to handle an emergency. It’s kind of like second nature,” he said.
Copyright 2009 The Patriot News Co.
All Rights Reserved