James P. Webb helped attempt to rescue Nelson V. Ramos from life-threatening injury, Beverly, Massachusetts, October 3, 2000. At night, Ramos, 33, was thrown from the passenger seat of a car during a highway accident in which the car struck and broke off a utility pole. Badly injured and unconscious, he lay on the pavement beside the car, under high-voltage lines that, still affixed to the downed top of the pole, were about four feet off the street in that vicinity. Awakened in his nearby home by the accident, Webb, 42, teacher, immediately responded to the scene. Crouching, he approached Ramos under the lines to tend to him. He was joined shortly by a motorist, who was a nurse. Preparing to reposition Ramos, Webb and the nurse each sustained a major electrical shock from one of the lines that sent both to the pavement, unconscious. Ramos, Webb, and the nurse were taken to the hospital, where Ramos was pronounced dead of his crash-related injuries. Webb and the nurse required hospitalization for treatment of electrical injury, Webb being detained for 13 days, then requiring months of therapy.
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74803-8533