Teachers save boy’s life after pencil punctures his artery
WELLINGTON, Fla. (WCMH) – Two teachers are being called heroes after they saved a student’s life when his artery was punctured by a freshly sharpened pencil.
Kolsten Moradi, had just sharpened his pencil and put it in his backpack at the end of the school day when he sat back down at his desk.
“It was kind of like a little pinch,” Kolsten, 8, told WPBF about the accident.
That pinch turned out to be his pencil impaling him, and puncturing the artery in his arm.
Kolsten immediately told his teacher, Mandi Kapopoulos, who had no time to panic.
“I pulled my arm out of my sleeve and I used my sleeve to wrap around his arm as tight as I could to hopefully stop the bleeding,” said Kapopoulos.
Across the hall, another teacher, Elizabeth Richards, heard the commotion and came to help. “It was shocking to come upon the amount of blood the child had lost in such a quick amount of time. We got to him and stopped the bleeding in his arm by applying pressure with my hands,” she told WPBF.
Both teachers applied pressure to Kolsten until paramedics arrived and took him to the hospital.
According to emergency workers, Kapopoulos and Richards’ actions saved Kolsten’s life.
Kolsten’s mother, Annarisa Moradi, says she’ll be forever grateful. “You can’t say thank you enough to someone that saved your child’s life. There’s just no words that I could ever say to these two ladies, or the principal, or anyone at the school who had their hand in making sure this all went so well.”
After several staples to his arm, Kolsten was able to return to school the next day.