Minn. Couple Finds Good Samaritan Who Moved Car After Driver's Brain Seizure
The Good Samaritan behind a late-February act of kindness in Minnesota has come forward, saying it was all in a day's work when he rescued a man suffering from a brain seizure from a busy intersection.
Kyle Severson, a 16-year member of the Minneapolis Police Department, touched the hearts of Minnesotans when on Feb. 28, he responded to a 911 emergency call of a man slumped over the steering wheel of his car in Northeast Minneapolis. The man was 34-year-old Aaron Purmort, who is suffering from stage 4 brain cancer and had had a seizure on Feb. 28 while driving home from work.
Severson reportedly approached Purmort's vehicle just as the man came to, and after a brief line of questioning, Severson realized Purmort was incoherent, unaware of the current day or year and unaware he had been driving when he suffered his seizure. The police officer, noticing the scars on Purmort's head from previous brain surgeries, called an ambulance for the 34-year-old. Instead of impounding his vehicle, as is the routine procedure, Severson parked the car in a nearby parking lot. He then scrawled a brief note indicating the location of the vehicle and put it in Purmont's jacket pocket along with his car keys.
"Your car is parked in The Tobacco Shop parking lot on 18th Ave. and Stinson," the note read.
"I figured he had enough on his plate already," Severson told Today of his kind act.
Purmort's wife, Nora, found the kind note and her husband's car keys at the hospital following the seizure. She then posted about the act of kindness on her Facebook page, hoping to find the mysterious Good Samaritan who parked her husband's car in a parking lot, saving the couple from a large impound fee.
"On Friday night, Aaron had a seizure while driving home. Miraculously, nobody was hurt. We have no idea who called 911 or moved our car to safety and left this note in Aaron's jacket pocket, but we sure are grateful for them and their Minnesota spirit. Hoping this post finds a way into their news feed so they know how thankful we are for their actions. You saved my husband and that is pretty [expletive] rad," the Facebook post read.
Nora's Facebook post gained a widespread amount of attention on social media, and Severson told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he eventually fessed up to the act of kindness when his superior asked who had left the note during a morning roll call.
"I understand it's a big deal for him because he's in a rough spot in his life … and he really appreciates it, but for me, it was just a routine call," Severson said to the local newspaper last week. "For me, it's much to-do about nothing."
Severson added to KARE-TV that if he had thought the note was a big deal, he would have used better penmanship and signed his name. "I didn't think this would be a big deal," he said. "I didn't think to sign the note. If I thought it was a big deal I would have spent more time on my penmanship."