High school junior, 16, saves her unresponsive best friend's life in car crash just ONE DAY after she completed CPR training

High school junior, 16, saves her unresponsive best friend's life in car crash just ONE DAY after she completed CPR training

• Torri'ell Norwood, 16, had finished CPR training in a basic life support class at her high school in St. Petersburg, Florida on February 19
• On February 20, she was driving with three friends when they were hit by another car, sending them crashing into a tree
• Torri'ell found her longtime friend A'zarria Simmons, 16, unresponsive and not breathing in the back seat
• She pulled her out and performed CPR until A'zarria was breathing and regained consciousness
• A'zarria, who was taken by paramedics to the hospital, said Torri'ell 'always has my back

A high school junior saved her best friend's life by performing CPR following a car crash — just a day after she completed CPR training.

Torri'ell Norwood, 16, had just finished a basic life support class at her high school in St. Petersburg, Florida, when she and three friends were out for a drive and got hit by another car, sending them careening into a tree.

When she realized that her friend A'zarria Simmons, 16, was unresponsive in the back seat, she sprang into action, checking her vital signs and ultimately performing life-saving CPR before the paramedics arrived.

Torri'ell, 16, had just finished a basic life support class in Florida when she and three friends were hit by another car, sending them careering into a tree

Torri'ell finished her course on February 19, and was already putting it to good use on February 20.

She, A'zarria, and two other friends where heading home when another driver crashed into Torri'ell's car on the driver's side. They crashed through someone's front yard, hitting a tree.

The car was so beat up that Torri'ell couldn't get out of the driver's side door, so she climbed out of the front window. Two of her friends followed, exiting the car.

But A'zarria — whom Torri'ell has been friends with since seventh grade — didn't get out. When Torri'ell checked, she noticed her friend unconscious in the back seat, having apparently hit her head on the window.

'When I turned around, I didn't see A'zarria running with us,' Torri'ell told CNN. 'So, I had to run back to the car as fast as I can. She was just sitting there unresponsive.'

As people started to gather around, Torri'ell warned everyone to stay back while she pulled her friend out of the car and began working on her.

In a school program, Torri'ell learned how to check for vital signs, take blood pressure, help someone who is joking, use a defibrillator — and, most importantly, perform CPR

First, she checked the pulse in her neck, and then put her head against her friend's chest to check for breathing — but didn't hear anything.

'I immediately started doing CPR on her. She started moving on her own and breathing, so I knew that she was okay,' she told Inside Edition. 'I was just doing what I knew that I had to do.'

Torri'ell performed 30 compressions and two rescue breaths before her friend regained consciousness. Eventually, paramedics arrived and took her to the hospital.

'I don't remember the hit or anything about accident. But when I woke up, I was in the hospital. I was in shock. I was trying to figure out how I got there,' A'zarria said.

The teenagers were blessed with lucky timing. Just the day before, Torri'ell had completed St. Petersburg's Lakewood High School's Athletic Lifestyle Management Academy.

'I wasn't shocked by her doing it because she always does stuff for me,' A'zarria (left) said. 'She always has my back'

In the program, she learned how to check for vital signs, take someone's blood pressure, help someone who is joking, use a defibrillator — and, most importantly, perform CPR.

It came in handy faster than she could have expected.

'I never would have thought that I would be the one, out of all the students in my class, to have to perform it on someone,' she told CNN.

A'zarria, though, was not surprised that her friend came to her rescue.

'I wasn't shocked by her doing it because she always does stuff for me,' A'zarria told Inside Edition. 'She always has my back. It's deeper than a friendship, it's been deeper than that before this accident and all this happened. It's just made me realize [that] if she wasn't there, I wouldn't be here today.

'She will always help any way she can, to help anybody,' she added. 'Even if it wasn't me, if was someone else and she knew she could do something to help, she would do it. So I wasn't really shocked about that.'

Torri'ell plans to keep using those valuable skills in the future, and wants to become a nurse.

'I know that if somebody was in need of help, I'd go to the rescue,' she said.