Episode 2 Close Calls: On Camera

A close call - a moment of danger, when life can hang in the balance.

A split second, where the outcome could go either way.

I was rooted to the spot with fear.

The difference between disaster and survival.

Our hearts dropped.

This was a big crash.

These are the people that have been there and lived to tell the tale.

I need an ambulance.

15 minutes and your number would be up.

Their instincts and resources,

coupled with the quick thinking of others,

helped to pull them through.

Could have gone the wrong way, could easily have gone the wrong way.

And their dramatic experiences were recorded on camera.

I think there were several things that could have killed me,

should have killed me, and didn't.

It's a day they'll never forget.

The day they had a close call.

Today on Close Calls...

A DIY job for a friend leads to disaster...

..and a medical team have less than five minutes to act.

He wasn't breathing for himself.

He didn't have a recordable blood pressure.

He needed to have the surgery done there and then.

He couldn't even wait to get up to the theatre.

Plus, a bus roof is ripped off as passengers

dive for safety, fearing the worst.

Recent history as it is, the first thing that went

through my mind was that something had exploded.

And a photoshoot stunt goes wrong

when a professional bike rider makes a serious misjudgement.

He, like, nearly took his head off his shoulders.

I thought the worst straightaway.

It was disgusting to watch, you know?

Putney, West London.

Gym owner Chris Quinn has dialled 999.

Chris is right.

His friend Mark McCoyd has had a catastrophic accident with a power tool.

He's collapsed on the floor with a puncture wound to his chest.

He's barely breathing and his condition is worsening.

Mark's only hope is high-risk surgery.

He has no chance of survival unless this procedure is done.

But there isn't even time to get him to the operating theatre.

Aside from his two children,

Mark McCoyd's passion is restoring classic cars.

It's how he earns a living and no job is too big for him.

I do the bodywork and paintwork.

I like pre-war and after the war, which is my profession

since I was a boy of 15.

One of his clients is gym owner Chris Quinn,

who collects classic vans.

Over the years, the two men have become good friends.

Mark's been helping me look after the trucks, but I would have been seeing

Mark on and off for maybe the last...I don't even know,

maybe 10, 20 years, even.

Mark's work on cars means he's a pretty useful handyman.

And when Chris needs a job doing at his gym in Putney,

he knows the person to ask.

It was a metal security door that he wanted fitted,

so to do that I had to use an angle grinder to cut

the bricks out to get the frame in.

It was, on face value, a fairly easy job.

An angle grinder is a heavy-duty power tool.

A motor drives a disc, which can be used to cut through brick and metal.

Mark regularly uses them at his garage.

It was bigger than the one I would normally use on cars,

but it's the same principle, you know -

goggles, mask and gloves.

You've got a safety shield on the grinder itself

and that's all you can do, that's all there is to do.

The safety guarding goggles are essential

because the disc or blades can break.

So, kitted up, Mark starts work on the door.

I got to about three quarters of the way round all the frame

and obviously on the last bit, before I had time to finish,

is when the machine got caught and jumped back and hit me in the chest.

The blow stops Mark in his tracks and the machine cuts out.

It hit me quite hard. It was like a big thud into the chest.

There wasn't a lot of pain,

but I knew at the time that something was not good.

At first, Mark can't understand what's happened to him

and isn't even sure he's injured.

When I looked down I had a small hole,

a rip of about an inch and a half, two inches, in my jacket.

I lifted up all my clothing

and in the centre of my chest there was a hole the size of my finger.

Now Mark knows he's in trouble.

My breathing was becoming a little bit hard to breathe.

I pulled all my safety gear off and threw it on the floor.

Upstairs in his office, Chris had been alerted by a faint cry

and now the sound of silence.

He heads outside and can't believe what he finds.

He was lying on the floor with his eyes wide open

and his mouth open, and he more or less looked like he was dead.

A stunned Chris immediately dials 999.

This is the call he made that afternoon.

Initially, there was no movement,

no breathing at all and I couldn't hear a heartbeat.

And while I was talking to the people on the phone,

basically he made a great, big...

INHALES SHARPLY

..noise and then from that point on you could see that he was

struggling for breath, but there was one of these coming every few

seconds where he was breathing,

so I was kind of relieved that he was actually alive at that point.

Mark is still breathing,

but it's sporadic and his face is turning purple.

Chris realises his friend is deteriorating by the second.

As I was trying to work out what had happened,

I noticed a very, very small...

cut about the size of a pound coin,

right in the centre of his chest.

Later, Chris briefs medics as they arrive at the scene.

And Mark's condition worsens as his anxious friend watches on.

At the nearest trauma centre, an emergency team is standing by.

He was dying and he would be dead, properly dead,

within four or five minutes of arrival into the department.

Also coming up,

a pro biker misjudges a stunt.

Suddenly he was just there, just skidding across the roof.

His best pal, waiting for him on a rooftop, watches on in horror.

The sound of the impact was unreal.

It was a massive bang on the edge of that roof.

Kingsway, London.

A busy street in Holborn and there's chaos.

Passers-by film the roof of this double-decker bus

peeled back like a sardine can.

I hope no-one got hurt.

Businessman Llewellyn Hill is sitting on the top deck

as the bus travels along the tree-lined street.

All of a sudden, there was this huge bang.

All these windows bursting around me.

The first thing that went through my mind was that something had exploded.

Llewellyn Hill regularly travels from north Wales

to London for business.

It's a grey morning in February

and he's on his way to a seminar in the city.

He catches the 91 bus at Euston Station

and heads up to his preferred view on the upper level.

On the top deck there was maybe 18 or 24 people,

and generally I sit right in the front seat, but, as it turns out,

on this occasion they were taken, so I went and sat

about halfway back on the bus

and decided I'll catch up on my messages on social media.

Although Llewellyn is concentrating on his phone,

his attention drifts to the window.

Out of the corner of my eye, I did notice some of the street signs

go past and I thought, "Blimey, that's close to the bus."

But something is about to come even closer than the passing road signs.

Dangerously close.

All of a sudden, there was this huge bang.

It sounded like a crash of some sort, but instinctively

I just ducked down because I felt things hitting me.

Llewellyn fears the worst.

Being in central London and being on a bus,

and recent history as it is, the first thing that went

through my mind was that something had exploded.

As the debris stops falling and the bus comes to a standstill,

Llewellyn dares to move again.

Well, when I picked myself up off the seat

I was surprised to discover there was a lot of blue sky above me,

so it did take what seemed a few seconds to absorb what had happened.

Onlookers filmed the catastrophic scene.

The roof of the bus has hit some low hanging branches

and has been ripped right off, over the heads of all the passengers.

There was a chap in the aisle on his hands and knees, and he looked

up at me, looking quite frightened, with blood streaming down his face.

There were more people to the back of the bus, some of them

were holding their heads in their hands,

looking like they had been hurt or hit by something.

That was when I noticed that the roof of the bus was actually

resting on the back of the bus, like a big skateboard ramp.

Emergency services arrive and guide people off the bus.

Miraculously, no-one's been seriously injured.

Before leaving, Llewellyn records the scene himself.

I took the opportunity to take some photos from on the top deck of the bus.

Well, I suppose there was a million thoughts flying

through my head at the time.

I don't think I comprehended, even then,

just how serious the incident had been.

All that was left standing was these blue handrails.

If it wasn't for those handrails, with that roof leaving the bus at

speed, and if it had landed on people,

that would have been pretty ugly.

After such a close call, Llewellyn has been

cautious about travelling by bus.

But a couple of months later, he returns to London to face his fears.

I was contemplating, "Am I going to take the number 91 bus on the

very same route past the very same tree?"

I decided I'd better man up.

They say if you fall off a horse,

the only thing to do is get back on it.

And, actually, I photographed the tree and posted it out on my social media,

saying that was the tree that caused it last time.

Accidents happen every now and again in most people's lives.

For professional sports people, they are calculated risks,

but there are times when those calculations go wrong.

In Southsea, Portsmouth,

professional BMX competition riders Mark Webb and Alex Coleborn

rehearse some tricks for a sports magazine photo shoot.

I just love riding.

I just think it's amazing and there's not a better feeling than

jumping through the air or doing things that scare you and then you're pulling it.

There's no better reward than that.

But during a particularly tricky manoeuvre,

Alex's head hits the roof of a building.

His friend Mark comes rushing to his aid.

I thought the worst straightaway.

I knew it was serious.

The sound of the impact was unreal.

It nearly took his head off his shoulders.

BMX racing is now an Olympic event.

BMX freestyle isn't yet, but it's a growing sport that's

attracted 23-year-old Alex Coleborn since he was a youngster.

Alex's boyhood dream was to follow in the bike tracks of this guy -

five times BMX champion Mark Webb.

Alex became very skilled at freestyle himself.

Now, this is him aged just 17, performing tricks in a video

his parents made and sent to his hero Mark without Alex knowing.

Alex's mum and dad sent me an actual letter to the skate park,

"This is Alex, this is my son.

He wants to come over and ride." It was cool, actually,

that his parents had gone to the effort of doing that.

Mark was immediately impressed with what he saw.

I checked out the video and there was just something about Alex,

and I thought, "He's actually amazing, really good."

The next thing you know, he ends up staying down this way and riding,

and we end up becoming really good friends.

And Alex has turned professional himself,

earning a living from his passion and winning many titles,

much to the pleasure of his mentor.

He is definitely a genius when it comes to riding a BMX bike.

There is nothing that he can't do.

One summer's day, Alex and Mark head to a skate park

in Southsea for a photo session with a sports magazine.

It was a good day, it was a sunny day down Southsea,

so everyone was just chilled, cruising about.

A photographer is taking action shots.

Alex is hoping to pull off one of his most ambitious tricks yet.

I was fine that day, I felt good on my bike.

I wasn't really worried about the trick.

I was pretty confident in myself that I was going to pull it.

The photographer captures the action from the bottom of the ramp.

As Alex warms up for the main event,

performing a few comparatively straightforward barrel rolls.

It's kind of a backflip but just on the side,

so you kind of barrel roll over yourself.

But Alex is planning on

combining this manoeuvre with another highly skilled technique.

There was talks about trying a barrel roll with a tail whip.

A tail whip's when you spin the bike a full 360 with you

staying in the same space,

so your bike leaves your feet and then comes back and you catch to it.

It's a trick he's successfully performed in the past, but today,

on the very first attempt, something goes drastically wrong.

You all right? You all right?

As the camera continues to film, Mark, fearing the worst,

heads to his injured friend's side.

I just didn't expect it.

The barrel roll that he was doing was so consistent.

Suddenly it was just... And he was there,

just skidding across the roof.

Alex is bleeding heavily from his nose and mouth.

He is in a complete daze.

I didn't have a clue what was going on.

All I remember is trying to stand up and then Mark was like,

"Oh, you all right? You all right?" Like, seeing if I was OK.

I thought the worst straightaway. It was disgusting to watch.

I knew it was serious.

I knew just by the sound of the impact, it was unreal.

It was a massive bang on the edge of that roof.

He nearly took his head off at his shoulders.

His neck bent all the way back to his back.

He was folded in half. It was horrible.

The impact is so severe Alex could have fractured his skull or

even broken his neck, but he's conscious and moving.

It just kind of felt like my head was throbbing cos I hit it

so hard, and I was just a little bit dizzy and spat my gum shield out

and I could see my tooth in it.

As more people come to his aid,

a member of the team calls an ambulance.

Alex is helped down off the roof

and it looks like he's escaped life threatening injuries.

He can't remember exactly what happened,

but Mark is able to fill him in.

The paramedics arrive and treat Alex at the scene.

His face shows the effects of the high impact smash.

I knocked out my front tooth here and then

I bent this one back a little bit and I broke my nose,

and then obviously I had fat lips

and stuff like that, just from where the impact was on my face.

Alex still doesn't remember everything that happened that day,

but he's studied the footage to try to find out what went wrong.

This is where I'm getting my run up, obviously, to hit the roof

and it was at this point here where my foot fell off the pedal,

and that's basically where it all went wrong.

It could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse.

It looked worse.

It is pretty scary to watch it and think that I did hit my head and neck

off the roof and it snapped back,

so it's kind of like, it could have broken easy.

Your neck's not a very strong part of your body,

so it could have easily broken,

and I think I did get away with it really lucky.

The accident doesn't hold Alex back for long.

He's soon back on his bike to continue his successful career,

recently winning a major world title.

Alex is a tough kid like no other.

He'd bounce himself off the ground and jump up and go, "Yeah, I'm all right."

For maybe like a week or two

I was a bit cautious of doing things because obviously

I didn't want to hit my face again, but you soon forget about it.

I'm sure if it was now, he'd do that barrel roll onto the roof

again no problem without the hiccup that he had that day.

Back in Putney, West London, gym owner Chris

is on the line to the emergency services.

His friend Mark is on the ground, struggling to breathe.

Just a few minutes ago, the blade on a heavy-duty power tool he was

using shattered, hitting him in the chest with devastating consequences.

An ambulance is on its way.

Within five minutes, the ambulance arrives at the scene.

I have no idea how long it took the ambulance to come here.

As far as I'm concerned, it was a very, very quickly.

It was almost as if they were hanging around outside.

The paramedics rushed to Mark's side.

Chris' open phone line records him briefing them.

One of the paramedics at the scene is David Biginton,

who immediately realises that Mark is in serious danger.

When I saw Mark's wound,

it was a two centimetre by one centimetre hole,

basically, and being hit with an angle grinder you might

have expected a much more open wound, a more extensive wound.

So my concerns really were what underlying structures

has he injured. Is it his lung, is it his heart?

Given that it was over the top of both of them, pretty much.

If it was his lung, the chances are it would have been bubbling

air through the blood, which it wasn't.

And given its location,

the most likely injury it could have done was his heart.

If I'm honest, I thought his chances were probably slim,

so, apart from a bit of sedative and some oxygen,

the only other treatment that he got was the decision to get him

to hospital as quick as possible and the right hospital.

With Mark onboard the ambulance, the paramedics head to

St George's Hospital in south London -

the nearest major trauma centre.

En route to the hospital his vital signs were changing,

identifying that something internally was going wrong.

We pretty much came to the conclusion that he was

probably having a cardiac tamponade,

which is bleeding around the sack of the heart.

Paramedic Dave asks the ambulance control centre to ring

ahead to the emergency department,

but consultant Dr William Glazebrook

and his trauma team are on full alert.

At about 2:45, our red phone went off.

The London Ambulance Service were telling us to expect a middle-aged

gentleman who had an injury to the centre of his chest.

When Mark arrives, Dr Glazebrook and the team realise

that this is about as bad as it gets.

He wasn't breathing for himself, he didn't have a recordable blood

pressure and his heart was going at about 140/150 beats per minute.

It's not clear what the injury is, but it's obviously life-threatening.

He was dying and he would be dead, properly dead,

within four or five minutes of arrival into the department.

Dr Glazebrook and his team will have to operate right here,

right now, in the emergency department.

His injuries were so severe he needed to have the surgery done there and then.

He couldn't even wait to get up to the theatre,

even if it was ready there and then.

Mark's condition is deteriorating so much that Dr Glazebrook has

no choice but to carry out a highly dangerous procedure

called a thoracotomy.

The operation has a less than one in five chance of success.

If Mark hadn't had this procedure,

he has a 100% mortality rate,

ie, he has no chance of survival unless this procedure is done.

We cut from one side of the chest to the other side of the chest

and open up the whole of the chest

so we have a really good access to the heart and to the lungs

to find out and diagnose what injury was killing Mark.

And it's soon clear what's going wrong.

When we opened Mark's chest,

all we could see was a big bag of blood clot

and the procedure then is literally to make a small hole in this bag,

and to remove all of that blood clot from around the heart.

As soon as we did that, Mark's heart then came into view,

started filling up with blood and started beating again.

Finally, Mark's heart starts working.

It reveals the full extent of the damage caused by the angle grinder.

We noticed three small jets of blood coming out of the holes

in the heart and, initially, all we did was put our fingers

on the three holes to stop them from within.

Like plugging a leaking Dam,

Dr Glazebrook and his team stitch up the holes in Mark's heart.

Once we'd got control of the bleeding in Mark's chest,

he went up to our cardiothoracic theatre

with our cardiothoracic surgeons, where the procedure that we'd done

was tidied up and his chest was closed.

Just hours after almost losing his life,

Mark awakes in the intensive care unit.

When you wake up, you sort of just come to automatically.

He's desperate to see his children.

My daughter and my boy, Emma and Lewis,

were the first people that I saw.

And considering what I'd been told already that I'd gone through,

I might never have seen them again.

Seeing my kids was brilliant, it was the best thing ever.

Mark's next visitor is a man who is also very pleased to see him.

He probably actually looked better than he does on a normal day.

They cleaned him up, shaved him,

washed his hair and he was sitting up there

and he was just telling them he's bored and wants to get out.

I mean, this was just moments after the operation.

Mark knows that he owes his friend a huge debt of gratitude.

Without Chris coming to actually look out the door

and check on me, I wouldn't have been alive.

It remains a mystery just how the angle grinder made

the three holes in Mark's heart.

But it was the quick action of the medical team,

prepared to carry out the high risk operation while he was

still in the emergency department that ultimately saved his life.

I've done this procedure about 12 times now

and this is the first survivor that I have had

in the seven or eight years that I've been able to perform this.

It is actually a miracle that he's still with us.

I mean, if it had been an inch or even a centimetre,

a tiny little bit either way, he probably wouldn't be here now.

This is the closest I've ever come to dying.

Without all those circumstances just happening instantly like that,

I wouldn't be here at the moment.

And Mark will forever be indebted to the team at St George's Hospital

who managed to bring him back from the brink.

Mark basically came in dead to our department.

Some people described his case as a bit of a miracle.

I don't believe he was a miracle.

I think his case is what the trauma networks

that are set up around the country now are for.

It's him, it's his particular patient.

He was found quickly,

the ambulance crew recognised he had a significant injury,

he was brought to a department where this procedure could be

done on him immediately, but for that, he would have died.

Close calls with a positive ending - that's what we like.

Join us next time.