When his friend collapsed, he rushed him to the fire station in a pickup

A pair of old friends were going to catch up over a few beers Friday night, but didn’t have a chance to before one of them had to rush the other to get emergency help.

One of the men collapsed and started experiencing convulsions so his friend put him in a pickup truck and brought him straight to Lady’s Island-St. Helena Island Fire District Station 21 on Sams Point Road, according to a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office report. The friend was under the impression that the man “recently got into opiates of some sort” but didn’t know if that was the cause. He was transported to Beaufort Memorial Hospital for further treatment.

According to the report, the cause of the episode was not clear, but the man had a “very pale, almost yellowish skin tone” and was having trouble breathing when deputies arrived at the fire station to find firefighters working to give him oxygen on top of a picnic table.

The two had been friends while growing up in Beaufort but had parted ways and lost touch, the fast-thinking friend told deputies according to the report. When his friend stopped by his house around 9 p.m. saying he wanted to “get (expletive) up” he told him they could have a couple of beers, but he had to go to work in the morning. The visitor went to buy beer which “took a lot longer” than it should have, and had the medical episode shortly after he returned around 1 a.m. on Saturday, according to the report.

This story was originally published June 18, 2017 at 5:57 PM with the headline "When his friend collapsed, he rushed him to the fire station in a pickup."