TRUCKER PUTS BRAKES ON HEART ATTACK DRIVER 2009
A woman had a heart attack while driving on the highway, but a quick-thinking truck driver who knew he needed to stop her car may have saved her life and others.Joanne Haplin was driving on U.S. Route 22 in Weirton last week (3/4/09) on her way to check out her new doctor's office, when the situation quickly turned dangerous. "My stomach started feeling squishy and my eyes started getting (blurry) and I thought, 'What the heck?', so I thought I better pull over," she said. But she didn't make it off the road in time and fell unconscious behind the wheel. That's when a truck driver pulled up beside her, drove in front of her and forced her car to stop by allowing her to crash into his truck. The sequence was caught on Weirton Police Officer Tony Apesos' dash cam video. Officer Apesos said he was patrolling U.S. Route 22 when he saw other drivers getting out of their cars and running up to Haplin's. He said that's when both he and the truck driver knew they had to act fast. "When we got the vehicle stopped, we ran to the driver's side door and she was completely unconscious. She started to come around but had no idea what was going on," Apesos said. It turned out Haplin had suffered a mild heart attack behind the wheel. "You never think that's going to happen to me. I never get sick. I've never had a headache in my life, and here they tell me I have a heart attack," she said. Hours later, she had surgery to have a stent implanted to help her blood flow. She said the procedure was a piece of cake compared to alternative outcomes. "I knew something was the matter with me. I could have hit a car or hit somebody," she said.