80’s rapper Kurtis Blow says LAPD saved his life
Kurtis Walker, aka Kurtis Blow, collapsed at a bus stop in Canoga Park, and four LAPD officers saved his life by giving him CPR.
“I died and those officers saved my life,” Walker said. “The police saved my life, a Black man. In this day and age, people need to hear that.”
Officers Peter Parra and Felix Rodriguez responded to a robbery call to find an older man arguing with his son. Chris Vege and his partner Calvin Hill Jr. arrived as well, and shortly after that, walker collapsed.
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“We didn’t think about it; we just acted. I swept his airway for obstructions, and Officer Hill started chest compressions,” Vege recalled.
Parra also noted that it looked like Walker was having “some sort of heart episode.”
At some point while doing CPR, Walker stopped breathing.
“It seemed like a really long time when you’re pressing on a man’s chest, hoping he won’t die,” Hill said.
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Witnesses said that Hill continued CPR for five minutes before paramedics arrived to take Walker to the hospital, where he asked to see the officers that had saved him.
“We didn’t think too much about what we had done, but we were curious to see how the man was doing,” Vega recalled. “So we drove to the hospital later that night, and several people made a big deal about us saving the man’s life.”
