Hero Sedgley father helped save teen daughter

Peter Whitehouse put into action the CPR skills he had learned more than 30 years ago at Boys Brigade when his youngest daughter Chloe collapsed while tidying her bedroom.

The family from Sedgley are still reeling from the incident, which took place at their home in Clee View Meadow on July 1 at 8pm.

Peter, aged 51, says: "At the time I was watching the European Championship Final and then I heard my wife Heather screaming.

"I ran upstairs and when I saw Chloe on the floor of her bedroom. I thought 'don't panic' but when I picked her up she was starting to go blue."

Heather, 49, who works for Dudley Council says Chloe was clearing out her room and preparing to move into her sister's larger room when she collapsed.

"I was also upstairs in another bedroom and just heard a thud and thought she had dropped something, but what alerted me was she made a noise, like a deep-throated gurgle, and I knew something was up.

"She had collapsed with her head against the door and I picked her up thinking she had fainted, but I started screaming for Pete when I saw her eyes had rolled back into her head."

The brave couple, who have two other children – Luke and Lucy – managed to move Chloe onto their landing where Peter, who runs a Land Rover parts business, was administered the first aid he had learned at Lanesfield Methodist Church as a boy.

"Heather had called an ambulance and within minutes paramedics were with us and they had to shock her four times to get a heartbeat," says Peter.

"They took her to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where they ran tests on her heart, but couldn't find anything unusual. It was a horrendous time and the doctors told us they didn't know which way it was going to go."

Chloe, who is studying hairdressing at Wolverhampton College and works at the Martin Paul salon in Penn, was in a coma for a week and then moved to the coronary care unit.

Heather adds: "Since Chloe has come home we have done a lot of research into cardiac arrests in the young and we realised it was similar to footballer Fabrice Muamba who suffered a cardiac arrest in March during a match. When something like this happens it makes you look at everything and you realise what is important – and that is family. Me and Peter are now struggle to leave her alone – it is like having a baby again as we are watching her every move, worried it is going to happen again."

The former Dormston School pupil has now been fitted with a defibrillator and her family are organising a charity fundraising event at Himley Country Club on October 27. The event is to raise money for equipment to use on the Queen Elizabeth Hospital critical care unit and for CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young).

Also friends will be helping raise money by taking part in the Wolverhampton Marathon cycle event.

Chloe, who returned home on July 18, says: "It does scare me to think that I almost died but dad did so well – I don't know how he stayed so calm."