When Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death despite her cries for help, it added to the perception of New Yorkers as being heartless and cold. But Richard Bermudez was anything but that: The bus driver’s Good Samaritan efforts last Thursday to help a woman have led to his death.
Bermudez, just days before he was set to get married and a month before his retirement, suffered a brain aneurysm after the strain of trying to rescue a woman after a tornado swept through Queens last week. He had been put on a ventilator, and his family had him taken off it three days later, becaue he had told them he never wanted to live on a machine, according to the New York Post.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/storm_tragic_hero_inbNBz4NowHbonA3H2abuO
Bermudez desperately tried to help a woman, Aline Levakis, who was trapped in her car after a tree fell and crushed it during the tornado. She died at the scene.
Bermudez was distraught when he failed to rescue Levakis, and began to complain of headaches and of feeling ill. He was riding in a co-worker’s car when he slumped down, according to The Post, and was brought to Queens General Hospital.
Bermudez, who had high blood pressure, had an aneurysm, a blood vessel in his brain has burst. He was placed on the ventilator, and had been deemed brain dead.
