Former Fiji Bati and disgraced NRL star Jarryd Hayne found himself at the center of a life-threatening prison emergency during a game of touch footy with other inmates at the Geoffrey Pearce Correctional Centre in Sydney.
Hayne was playing footy with around 20 prisoners when one inmate suddenly collapsed in the middle of the game due to a heart attack.
The Sunday Telegraph obtained a vision of Hayne and other prisoners rushing to the prisoner to provide aid after his collapse on the field.
The paper reports the 35-year-old held up a towel to protect the man from the sun while prison officers worked to revive him.
“The inmates had said he just passed out. He tried to get up at one stage but then collapsed again,” prison guard Peter Terry told The Sunday Telegraph.
“He was breathing at that stage, one of the officers was checking his pulse and talking to him, and then all of a sudden he checked out again and there was no pulse so we rolled him over and I started CPR.”
Nurses arrived at the scene a short time later to apply a defibrillator to the man’s chest and continue performing CPR until an ambulance arrived 25 minutes later.
The man was rushed to hospital where he was placed in an induced coma.
He ultimately survived the ordeal and returned to the prison two weeks later to thank the guards involved in saving his life.
“He is fine, I caught up with him a couple of weeks ago when he returned from the hospital, he’s in a wheelchair at the moment,” Officer Terry said.
“He had a few displaced ribs but that’s minor compared to what he was going through and what could have happened. He was in good spirits.
“It was a surreal unusual feeling going through that, but more surreal he came and thanked me.”
Corrective Services Commissioner Kevin Corcoran applauded the officers involved for saving the prisoner’s life.
