Off-Duty Officer Revives Man

Had it not been for the 14 Division officer, the 64-year-old Greater Toronto Area resident might not be alive today.

Corazo suffered a heart attack on a train at Exhibition GO Station just after midnight on July 19 and was without vital signs for several minutes.

“He was in very bad shape,” recalled Watson, who had just completed his shift and was on the crowded train off-duty. “I had just made my way from the middle to the front of the train when I was attracted to screams for help coming from the train’s second deck. When I went upstairs, I saw him lying on the floor and he was without a pulse.”

Watson performed CPR for about seven minutes while a nurse provided a slight head-tilt to open the victim’s airway.

Then, by using an automated external defibrillator which was on the train, Watson applied shock treatment and continued delivering chest compressions to Corazo.

“The first shock did nothing,” he recounted. “When he got the second one, about a minute later, he came back to life.”

The victim was removed from the train, which remained at the station after the passenger assistance alarm was activated, and taken by ambulance to hospital where he made a full recovery.

Corazo was returning home with his wife, their only daughter and her friend, after attending a Katy Perry concert at the Air Canada Centre.

“We took our daughter and her friend to see the show and were heading back to our residence when I blacked out on the train,” said Corazo. “My wife said I just collapsed.”

On September 29, Corazo and his wife, Jeanette, along with his sister and brother-in-law Thelma and AL Dawson, personally thanked Watson at 14 Division station.

“I am feeling much better now and I will be eternally grateful to Chris for what he did,” Corazo said. “He absolutely saved my life.”

Watson said this was the first time that he used his CPR training to save a life.