SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A San Diego woman is recovering after a freak accident while surfing in Pacific Beach in early September, and she said it was the quick thinking of her friend and a lifeguard who likely saved her life.
Alli Breighner went surfing with some friends in Pacific Beach on Sept. 6. She doesn’t remember much about what landed her in the hospital, but her friend Alec Maddox remembers it clearly.
"It looked like she took an ax to the leg, and I could see her femur," said Maddox.
Breighner was badly hurt and bleeding in the water. It wasn’t a shark or a stingray, as Maddox knew it had to be her surfboard fin. He was right, the fin had slashed her thigh and severed her femoral artery.
“So I just saw her, saw the blood, heard her scream and then … ‘this is serious, we need to go, now,’” Maddox told ABC 10News
Breighner passed out as Maddox rushed her to shore, thinking fast, accepting the help of a stranger on the beach. Maddox, a former Marine, told the man to grab something so he could use it as a makeshift tourniquet.
He applied the tourniquet while lifeguards arrived. One of those lifeguards was Skye Poskey, a lifeguard for the City of San Diego. Poskey's training quickly kicked in. He applied a real tourniquet to get Breighner to the hospital as fast as possible.
“The amount of bleeding that I saw, I know that the difference was getting that improvised tourniquet on there,” said Poskey.
Breighner lost three liters of blood and doctors rushed her into emergency surgery. Nearly a month later, Breighner is walking again, still bandaged but healing.
Breighner said she's grateful for the men who saved her life and she's looking forward to getting back in the water once she's recovered completely.
“I'm truly thankful that he was there, the lifeguard, just everyone, even strangers coming to help,” Breighner said.
