ALBANY, Ga. (WALB) - A May 2024 graduate of Deerfield-Windsor who lost his arm in a deadly crash is now partnering with Phoebe Putney and the Dougherty County Emergency Management Service (EMS) to teach courses about stopping severe bleeding.

The skills Vansh Patel is helping teach are the same ones that helped save his life.

Patel was a passenger in a Terrell County crash hours after his graduation ceremony on May 20, 2024. The driver, another 2024 Deerfield graduate, was killed on the scene. Patel was life flighted from the scene and was in the ICU for weeks.

|READ MORE: Recently graduated Deerfield-Windsor student, football player killed in crash|

But before paramedics arrived to the scene of the crash, a friend of Patel’s who had just taken a “Stop the Bleed” course with Dougherty County EMS did.

“A simple tourniquet class that would have taken 30 minutes was enough to save my life that day,” Patel said.

Just over a year later, Patel is teaching students of “Stop the Bleed” classes.

Implemented in 2017 by the Georgia Trauma Commission, “Stop the Bleed” is an effort to prepare schools for emergencies like active shooter situations.

Dougherty County EMS helped to bring the training into classrooms and distributed 250 kits to public schools for use by safety staff, law enforcement and bus drivers. Phoebe Putney extended the program to private schools like Sherwood and Deerfield-Windsor, which now has six kits each on-site. The 45-minute class teaches wound packing and tourniquet use skills.

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