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Posted by NEWS1 BY ANGELA CHRISTOFOROS LANCASTER PUBLISHED 5:57 PM ET APR. 23, 2015 on Aug 5th 2021

His Life Saved After Severe Shocking, Lancaster HS Junior Teaches Others CPR

His Life Saved After Severe Shocking, Lancaster HS Junior Teaches Others CPR

I was moving goalposts with my coach and two other kids, the high voltage wires shocked us. I immediately went into sudden cardiac arrest and Detective Keith Kerl was luckily only two minutes away," said JJ, a junior.

"We had a defibrillator handy, we immediately started CPR, we were able to do two successful, defibrillations and the rest is a very successful story," Kerl said.

That inspired JJ to learn CPR and become an American Heart Association Instructor himself, to return the favor and teach it to other students.

"That would be great if we could have more people as lucky as me and my family to be able to survive sudden cardiac arrest," said Pesany.

"There's over 424,000 people a year that suffer a sudden cardiac arrest in this country alone. We only have an 11 percent survival rate," said American Heart Association volunteer Annette Adamczak.

The American Heart Association hopes those rates will increase by teaching more students hands-only CPR.

As of now, 21 states have adopted a CPR smart school policy. New York is working towards becoming the next state.

We're waiting for a formal proposal to be done and we're hoping that by May 19, we'll get notification as to whether or not it will become a state mandate," Adamczak said.

The goal is to make New York schools CPR smart, and to make it a requirement for students to be trained before they graduate high school.