The Wilmington College football defensive line coach may have saved the life of a 32-year-old man at the King Commons shopping center in town after the man reportedly overdosed on heroin.

Bryce Bozman was at Subway's restaurant June 11 in the shopping plaza on South South Street ordering a sandwich when a woman "comes running in screaming and crying that her husband was not breathing," Bozman said.

When he saw the victim in a vehicle, the man's face was bluish-purple, said Bozman, and there was no pulse or breath. He said he thought "this guy is already gone."

The football team's strength-and-conditioning coordinator pushed down the PC Cruiser car seat and performed chest compressions and CPR on the man.

"So from there, say within 30 seconds his hand jolted, and his heart started beating in his chest again. He came back," said the 29-year-old Bozman.

Bozman did mouth-to-mouth three times on the victim, he said.

Bozman became a life guard at 16 and relearned CPR in the U.S. Army. That's where he "really truly learned CPR," he said, and had to do it for the first time during a deployment in Iraq.

The June 11 incident in Wilmington, he said, "reminds me how short life is, how much we take for granted."

He said he hopes the close call will be an "eye-opening experience" for the Hillsboro man who later advised police he had overdosed on heroin, according to a copy of a Wilmington Police Department incident report.

Bozman said, "He contacted me, just to thank me, the other day."

Written by Gary Huffenburger, Wilmington News Journal
Gary Huffenberger can be reached at 937-382-2574 ext. 213 or on Twitter @GHuffenberger.