High school basketball player Angus Miller is being lauded as a hero after making a split-second decision that saved the life of an opponent.
The Oklahoma teen was playing in a game last Thursday when a player from the other team collapsed to the floor. The opponent, Randy Vitales, had gone into full cardiac arrest.
Angus, 18, a trained lifeguard, adjudged as much and used an AED to save his opponent’s life while he lay helpless on the court. 16-year-old Randy met his hero this past Tuesday for the first time since the near-fatal incident.
“I honestly don’t know what to say to you,” he’s heard saying in a video shared by KOCO News Oklahoma City as he stands up from his hospital bed.
The teens, who were strangers before last Thursday, dapped up and hugged as if they had been friends all of their lives.
“I’ll always be there for you,” Miller vowed as they held each other, also telling his counterpart there was no way he would have let him die.
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Angus Miller “Didn’t Have any Second Thoughts”
Vitales collapsed after scoring a layup just three minutes into the game.
“He just went [for a] layup, and I was getting the ball, about to dribble up the court, and I turned around, and he’s on the ground,” Miller explained. “I didn’t have any second thoughts about it, I just jumped in and took control.”
Miller administered successive shocks to the unconscious Vitales with an external defibrillator before telling school staff how to perform CPR.
Firefighters who arrived later told KOCO he “without a shadow of a doubt,” prevented Vitales from dying right there on the court.
“It’s probably one of the biggest things I’ve done in my life,” Miller said, though he refrained from taking credit as he claimed God put him there that day.
“It’s pretty surreal,” he continued. “It’s weird hearing someone say you saved their life. But it wasn’t really me. It was God just being there for me and him. Obviously, I didn’t go there to play basketball that day.”
