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Tyrone Gray is something of a local hero at the Orangeburg Post Office, proving he can use his hands beyond his duties as a maintenance mechanic and safety captain.
Wednesday, Sept. 5 was not an ordinary day for the soft-spoken 62-year-old chicken farmer who has worked with the postal service for nearly 18 years.
A maintenance call from the supervisor to help fix a carrier's broken-down truck quickly turned into a matter of life and death.
The alternator in carrier Keith Sutcliffe's truck had gone out and he left vehicle idle at the 700 block of Seawright Street. After using his booster pack tools to repair the truck, Gray made his way back to the post office when he saw a lady running, he assumed from a dog.
After all, the dog was barking while chasing after her. What was Gray to think when the women fell down and left herself open to being attacked by a vicious animal?
He quickly turned his postal truck around when the dog ran away and the woman got up and proceeded down Seawright Street.
It was then that Gray saw a bloody man holding his stomach and walking toward what Gray assumed was his home on Seawright Street.
"I asked him if the dog did that to him, and he said, 'No, I was stabbed.' There was a chair on the front porch. He sat down in the chair. His lower frontal area was cut, but he had it covered up. The lady got me a clean bath towel," Gray said. "Then I just did what I was taught to do in first aid: try to stop the bleeding and apply direct pressure."
Gray could see that the victim's lower abdominal injury was "pretty bad" and that he had also been stabbed in the back.
"I was taking care of, I guess, the worst wound, and the chair was applying direct pressure on his back wound. Then Keith happened to come out to Stilton (Road), which was right at the intersection from where we were at Seawright. I motioned him to come over, and I told him to call 911," Gray said.
Relief set in when a deputy arrived in a four-wheel drive pick-up truck.
"I think he was already in the area. He came and started questioning the person that had been cut. I wasn't listening too much to what they was saying. He had already bled a good bit, and I heard the ambulance in the background," Gray said.
The victim had started to go into shock by the time he was loaded onto the ambulance.
"I understand ... he is in stable, but guarded, condition. I also understand that law enforcement caught the one that did it. It might have been 15 to 20 minutes of them arriving," Gray said. The Orangeburg County Sheriff's Office confirmed Friday a suspect is in custody.
Gray doesn't spend too much time thinking about what prompted the stabbing in the first place.
"My only job in that particular case was to try to preserve his blood in his system until you get some more professional help. I'm just glad the postal department has trained me to handle these situations ... even though they might be crazy or weird. They trained me in the use of the CPR method, and I'm also ce.jpgied to use a defibrillator," Gray said.
Would he do what he did again? It depends on the circumstances.
"If somebody would have been coming up with a knife or a pistol in his hand chasing the victim, I probably wouldn't have. I could have received bodily harm. But, under the conditions, I thought that everything was safe. I'm glad that I could contribute that little bit of knowledge I had to help him come through this incident," Gray said.
Gray is a self-proclaimed daredevil who is also a pilot, on top of his extensive farming duties.
"Most all pilots live on the edge at some time and point in their life. That incident gives me, I guess, more pride and self-esteem. Some medical people would say that would have been stupid without gloves and protective equipment. But I challenged myself in a bloody situation like it was to see if I could help without getting any blood on me, and I didn't," Gray said. "I don't advise nobody else to try that."
Orangeburg Postmaster Claude Dash said both Gray and Sutcliffe are to be commended for their efforts.
"The employees, especially our carriers, are actually the ears of the community. They would be the first to notice anything that's different or out of the ordinary. That's not just here in Orangeburg, but across the nation, where you will periodically see where a carrier saves someone's life, or was there to prevent any tragedy from occurring, especially for our senior citizens," Dash said.
"That was a very commendable job by Tyrone, the local hero here. He's gotten a lot of accolades not only here, but throughout the postal service," said Dash, noting that the Orangeburg Post Office is one of only three postal sites in the state which have been nominated for inclusion in the Occupational Safety & Health Administration's Voluntary Protection Program.
"We're trying to earn our VPP star," Dash said.
T&D Staff Writer Dionne Gleaton can be reached by e-mail at dgleaton@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5534. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.