Bob Foos
Tyler McCoy was having a bad day to say the least.
After buying some items at ExpressRx Pharmacy, he found himself locked out of his car. Calling a locksmith or the police weren’t viable options, so he punched his arm through the back window of his hatchback.
It was nearing closing time, 6 p.m., on Friday, Oct. 3, when on the third floor of the Unity Building across Daugherty Street, Bubba McGowan heard screaming and looked out to see Tyler fling the door of the store open and go inside still screaming.
“I didn’t know he was cut – just hurting,” recalled McGowan, who hurried down to the store and ran to the commotion in front of the pharmacy counter.
What he saw was Tyler flailing on the floor and a woman taking charge while trying to stop blood from streaming out of the gash in his arm.
“It was less than a minute and she had him down and was yelling for help,” says McGowan.
Heidi Conner and her daughter, Iyona, were in Webb City for the first time. They had just driven in from Texas and were exploring downtown shops.
Heidi recalls initially thinking Tyler had been stabbed in the stomach and was being followed by the guy (McGowan) who had stabbed him.
“Oh no, this is bad and the person behind him had stabbed him,” she was thinking.
Fortunately, for Tyler, Heidi has experience with medical emergencies. She was formerly a surgical technologist, or scrub nurse, in the trauma center at the Hospital of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
She was having him lay down and was looking for his wound when she realized the main artery in his arm was cut – and Tyler was bleeding out.
“He was not in a right state of mind,” says McGowan. “He was in fear for his life.”
While Iyona was calling 911 and McGowan was restaining Tyler, Heidi was trying to stop the flow of blood.
She called out for a belt. None forthcoming, she and Iyona tried to remove Tyler’s belt. Meanwhile she was holding pressure on his arm hoping a rag she tied on his upper arm would help.
Tyler downed a bottle of water, and Heidi had Iyona get him another because that would help reduce the blood flow.
Tyler was crying for his parents.
“I’m a believer,” says Heidi. “I knew he knew the Lord, and we prayed together.”
She tried to calm him down by having him breathe slowly with her. “The faster you breathe, the faster your heart beats and the faster you bleed out.”
Just as she was tightening a belt provided by the pharmacist to make a tourniquet, police officer Gavin Gannaway rushed in.
In a description of the scene in his report, Gannaway writes that Tyler’s shirt and pants were covered in blood. He applied his tourniquet high on the arm near the shoulder, and the belt that Heidi had used was removed.
But the wound, 3 to 4 inches long and an inch wide, was still bleeding uncontrolled.
Then officer Gavyn Burns arrived, and he tightened a second tourniquet lower on Tyler’s arm.
“We were able to get the bleeding under control once a couple of firefighters arrived on scene and they began to take control of the situation,” reports Gannaway.
Upon his investigation after Tyler had been taken by amblance to the hospital, Gannaway reports he was told Tyler had asked to call a locksmith but learned he couldn’t afford it. He was asked if he wanted to call the police, “but he told them he wasn’t a fan of the cops and the cops weren’t fans of him.”
Once Tyler returned inside the store screaming and the source of the flow was discovered, Gannaway writes, “Ms. Conner jumped into action by holding pressure to the male’s wrist with rags as well as removing the male’s belt to make a tourniquet.”
He continued, “Ms. Conner assisted in saving Mr. McCoy’s life by holding pressure and making a tourniquet to help slow the amount of blood coming from the wound.”
“I think it was divine intervention that he (Tyler) was near a pharmacy and he ran straight into a nurse,” says McGowan. “Thank God she was a nurse.”
McGowan went to the hospital that night to check on Tyler and met his parents, Jeff and Sue Patterson.
Iyona called the Pattersons the next morning. She and Heidi had planned on going to the hospital but learned Tyler had been released during the night.
This gets to why Heidi had come here. Her son, Noah, is a wide receiver for the Missouri Southern State University Lions, and they had come to watch him play during a home game.
Jeff Patterson met Heidi and Iyona at the game to thank them for what they did for Tyler.
“We prayed with him,” says Heidi. “He gave us a $100 gift card. I tried not to take it, but he wanted us to take my son out to dinner with it.”
Knowing that Tyler would be OK and meeting his dad was special for Heidi.
“Working in a trauma center, you don’t often hear the end of the story. But because I got to connect with his parents, I got to hear more. That was a blessing.”
Rather than a coincidence, Heidi says she believes she was in Webb City that night by “divine appointment.”
“To have me here at that moment, six hours away from my home in Tyler, Texas. His name is Tyler.
“I know God spared him.
“I only did what anybody would do for what I was trained to do – and hope for the best.”
“Yeah, I was at the right place at the right time, where God had put me.”