Pupils hailed as life-saving heroes

A trio of quick-thinking boys from a Featherstone school are being hailed as heroes after putting their newly-learned first aid skills to the test.
Three year 7 pupils from St Wilfreds Catholic High school helped save a life after having first aid training at the school. Ben Grove, Finlay Weir and Harvey Symons.Three year 7 pupils from St Wilfreds Catholic High school helped save a life after having first aid training at the school. Ben Grove, Finlay Weir and Harvey Symons.
Three year 7 pupils from St Wilfreds Catholic High school helped save a life after having first aid training at the school. Ben Grove, Finlay Weir and Harvey Symons.

Ben Grove, Finlay Weir and Harvey Symons are all year seven pupils at St Wilfrid’s Catholic High School and had received basic first aid training as part of the curriculum.

And the three were called into action outside of school, first with Ben and Finlay who witnessed a man come off his bicycle and was left unconscious at a park in Altofts.

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The pair put him in the recovery position and when he came round, they comforted him waited until an ambulance arrived. He suffered two broken ribs and collar bone.

In an unrelated incident, 12-year-old Harvey had been on an errand to the local shop when he came across a man who had collapsed on Featherstone’s Victoria Street.

The man had fallen and split his head but Harvey calmly put him in the recovery position and reassured him that help was on the way and he should remain still.

Harvey then spent almost 13 minutes on the phone to the emergency services taking instructions until the ambulance arrived.

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Harvey’s mum, Vicky said: “The shop is only five minutes away and he was gone for an hours so we rang him and he said he’d be home once the ambulance had gone - we wondered what had happened!

“We didn’t even know he’d done first aid, he didn’t tell us.

“We are extremely proud of him, he’s a good kid anyway and most 12 year-olds seeing that amount of blood would be scared, but Harvey remained calm throughout.”

The basic first aid course has been taught to year seven pupils at St Wilfrid’s for the past three years in PE.

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Head of year, Richard Tracey said: “We’ve got the swimming pool here and the staff have to be retrained every two years, so we thought we could quite comfortably deliver this to the students.

“We tell them that they’ll probably never need to use it, and then we get three year seven pupils who did.

“It’s alright being trained, but dealing with an incident is another matter.

“We’re really proud of them and the headteacher has congratulated all of them for their great work in the community.”

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