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The Alabama Crimson Tide got out of Baton Rouge relatively healthy after a hard-hitting game against LSU, a 20-13 Alabama overtime win. The team’s doctors’ played their biggest role after the game, when they helped to save an LSU police officer who had been struck by a car.
As the Alabama team motorcade left Tiger Stadium Saturday, an LSU police officer was struck by a car about a mile from the stadium. According to a report from The Advocate (Baton Rouge), team doctors Lyle Cain, Norman Waldrop, Marc Biggers and Benton Emblom were on the scene quickly to lend their help. The doctors didn’t see the accident take place, but jumped out of their vehicle to tend to the injured officer, identified as Sgt. Christopher Gresham.
“When we got to him, he was unresponsive and unconscious, had multiple broken bones and you don’t know what’s going on internally. We knew it was life threatening and we knew there was a chance he could die right there in the road and so we needed to do whatever we could to maximize the chance that we could keep him alive.” Waldrop said to AL.com.
While none of the three doctors, who work with Andrews Sports Medicine & Orthopaedic Center in Birmingham and travel along with the Alabama football, have extensive trauma experience, they said they fell back on their training to help stabilize the officer. Gresham underwent surgery that night and remains in the hospital in stable condition.
“Our first thought goes from, ‘Wow, we just won a huge game,’ to ‘Wow, we need to try to save this person’s life,'” Waldrop said in the AL.com article.
The LSU Police Department issued a statement after the incident, thanking the Alabama team doctors for attending to Gresham until emergency personnel could arrive. The driver who struck the officer was cited for failure to yield to an emergency vehicle.
A former freelance journalist from Philadelphia, Brett has made the trek down to SEC country to cover the greatest conference in college football.
