NEWARK, NJ (AP) – When a traveler was hit at Newark Liberty International Airport, police were assisted by a famous doctor, Mehmet Oz.
The incident occurred late Monday night when port authority officer Jeffrey Croissant saw the 60-year-old man fall to the ground near a baggage claim area.
Croissant called for help and immediately began performing CPR on the unknown man, who was not breathing and appeared to have no pulse, the Port Authority said.
When another person came to help, Croissant didn’t immediately recognize that it was Oz, the heart surgeon and long-time host of TV’s “Dr. Oz Show,” who happened to be in the area.
The two performed CPR on the man together until three other agents delivered oxygen and a defibrillator for the man, who eventually got a pulse again and was taken to a hospital for evaluation.
“What better help than having a heart surgeon?” Croissant said afterwards.
Oz told Good Morning America that his daughter warned him about the man and when he turned around, he saw the man lying on the floor with a pool of blood next to his head.
The defibrillator “determined that his heart had stopped, as I thought it would if I didn’t get a pulse,” Oz said. ‘He said we should go. And you’ve seen those movies where the patient is shocked and ripped them off the ground? That’s exactly what happened. Usually the heart doesn’t start again … in this case, like in the movies, his heart started. “
Oz has called on injured people on numerous occasions.
In 2015, emergency responders arriving at the scene of a crash on the New Jersey Turnpike found that Oz was already treating two injured people. And two years earlier, he helped a British tourist whose foot was cut off when a taxi driver jumped over the curb at Rockefeller Center in downtown Manhattan.