Hero Nurse Visits Ferry Victim She Saved
By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- British tourist Kerry Griffiths held fellow passenger Paul Esposito as he lay bleeding on the floor, his legs crushed by a metal pole that fell on him when the Staten Island ferry smashed into a pier.
She grabbed a belt and tied it around Esposito's limbs above the knee - a tourniquet that stemmed the blood flow, the young man recalled from his hospital bed. Griffiths visited Esposito on Friday, two days after the bloody wreck that killed 10 people and injured dozens more.
'He was dying, but I knew he had a fighting chance,' the 34-year-old nurse said when Esposito, 24, was able to thank her in person.
Griffiths said she ran through the dust and smoke moments after the ferry slammed into a pier Wednesday.
Esposito 'was the first person I saw. He was asking other people to help him,' she said. 'He was not far from dying in front of me, because he needed oxygen. He was about to pass out.'
After making the tourniquet, Griffith got a life preserver and put it under his head, trying to keep him safe from the wind-borne debris flying through the jagged hole in the ship's side.
'I held his hand, I stroked his head and face,' she said. 'And I put a chair in front of him, so he couldn't see the dead body just in front of us.'
A screaming woman lay nearby, her body sheared off at the waist by the same metal pole that destroyed Esposito's legs. The young man had tried to save the woman, grabbing her as they ran after the impact, Griffiths said. But they were both felled.
'He was so brave, so I said to him, 'You've got to live, to keep strong and focus on living!'' Griffiths said in a telephone interview Friday.
When the ambulance rushed him to Staten Island University Hospital, she was at his side. He was the first ferry accident victim to go into surgery.
When he awoke, he remembered the nurse with a British accent, who said her name was Kerry. But she was gone.
Esposito kept the green sweatshirt - hers - that she had taken off on the ferry to cover his torso and keep him warm.
The day after the accident, as he lay in a hospital bed with his legs amputated at the knee, Esposito's grandparents issued an appeal: The family wanted to find the nurse - who he remembered as having black hair and blue eyes.
Meanwhile, in her room at a hostel in Manhattan, Griffiths was writing a letter to the Esposito family. She called the hospital to ask how Esposito was doing and to get an address for the family.
On Friday morning, Paul Esposito's brother, Michael, a medical student in New York, picked up the British nurse and brought her to the bedside of the man she saved.
'We looked at one another and I cried. It was so overwhelming,' she said.
Esposito was heading home after leaving early from his job as a waiter at a restaurant in Manhattan when the accident happened.
Griffiths, who lives in Swansea, Wales, was visiting New York for the first time.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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