A man’s life was saved Thursday in St. Joseph when a police officer stopped to see what was going on.

“Officer Kyle Graham was en-route to a call last night, he observed a subject along the side of the road bleeding profusely from his arm.  He stopped, rendered first-aid, applied a tourniquet to the arm, contacted an ambulance, the ambulance arrived and rushed the gentleman to the hospital,” Commander Eric Protzman said. “He had a cut to a brachial artery.  Had it not been for officer Graham’s quick actions the gentleman would have lost blood and probably been deceased.”

31-year-old Graham has only been with the St. Joseph Police Department since January of this year. He was on his way to a report of a stolen vehicle call on Lake Avenue just before 7 p.m. when he notice the man on the side of the road.

“You never know when you respond somewhere what you may come across, what you may encounter so you need to be prepared and ready to do whatever with what may come up,” Protzman said.

The man was taken to Mosaic Life Care for treatment.  Protzman did not know the cause of the man’s injury when the St. Joseph Post spoke to him.  However, he said the Police Department will likely recognize Graham’s quick actions that saved the man’s life.

“We have a procedure we go through,” Protzman said. “We have an awards panel that looks over incidents and determines what the appropriate recognition would be.”