In July, Steve Edmonds was moving a piece of glass he intended to turn into a table onto a truck when it collapsed, slicing him in multiple places, including an artery. “There was so much blood it scared me to death,” recalls Edmonds.
That afternoon, in the parking lot of Greenway Center, Edmonds began rapidly losing blood. He recalls a bystander called an ambulance, but they were fielding so many questions from the dispatcher that Edmonds asked another man to call the police. “It seemed like when I told them to call the police, Officer Joshua Forney got there [in] less than a minute,” said Edmonds, who remembers the police car flying across the parking lot to help him. “If he hadn’t have got there I would have died,” said Edmonds.
On Thursday, September 5, Officer Forney was recognized with a Lifesaving Award at a ceremony at the police station. Chief Richard Bowers praised Forney’s timely intervention, his ability to stay calm, not panic, follow his training and assess the situation in the face of Edmonds’ severe injury and gushing blood. Edmonds was there to help present the award to the officer who probably saved his life.
Edmonds said Forney got right to work as he arrived and warned him it would hurt as he put two tourniquets in place. “The blood was shooting up like water … when he put that tourniquet on there … it immediately just calmed down. … But I screamed and hollered from Greenbelt to Largo and they had to take me straight to trauma because … once they took the tourniquets off they couldn’t stop it from bleeding,” said Edmonds, who also said when doctors removed the tourniquets at the hospital his blood began shooting back up. It took an hour or so to stitch and staple his wounds in the trauma department, he said. After they stitched him up they told him that without the tourniquet put in place by Forney he wouldn’t have made it to the hospital alive. “‘You’d have died in that parking lot’. … They say, ‘waiting on the ambulance, you’d have never made it,’ but he put that tourniquet on there just in time, ’cause I had lost consciousness, my mouth was dry, my clothes were soaking wet,” Edmonds recalls. “[Officer Forney said,] ‘It’s going to hurt, man, but I’m gonna save your life.’ And he did. He saved my life and I’m glad to be here today.”
Greenbelt Police Department didn’t have information about the response time of the ambulance nor which fire department responded to the EMS call.
After he was released from the hospital, Edmonds called Bowers, looking for the officer who had saved his life to thank him. Edmonds lives on Good Luck Road and every day since he’s kept an eye out for the officer who saved his life: “Every Greenbelt police car I see, I’m looking for Officer Forney.” The Lifesaving Award ceremony was Edmonds’ first chance to see Forney since he saved him. “I’m just so happy to see this guy today,” said Edmonds.
All Greenbelt police officers are trained in lifesaving first aid. They go through an annual in-service refresher course for dealing with trauma like gunshot wounds, stabbings or cuttings and carry trauma kits in their cars, said Public Information Officer Ricardo Dennis.
Part of Edmonds’ hand is still numb and he can’t make a full fist. Complete recovery will take a while, he’s been told. “I’m healing and I’m good,” he said, following the ceremony. “I’m just so glad and thankful for [Officer Forney],” reiterated Edmonds.