Fundraiser launched after Herefordshire son saves father's life

A family are planning to raise funds to highlight the issue of rural defibrillators after a father suffered a cardiac arrest.

Russell Davies collapsed on a roadside on his farm near the village of Lingen, Herefordshire, earlier this year.

His son, Ted, carried out CPR on him having recently completed a course, and a passing Amazon driver fetched a defibrillator from a nearby village.

"Without that I wouldn't be here now," said the older Mr Davies.

"We were very, very lucky that we were just on the road where the incident happened," his son said.

"If it had happened five minutes sooner we'd have been back off the beaten track and there wouldn't have been much chance of anyone finding us."

"Ted was doing CPR but that on its own was not enough. You really need to give your heart quite a big kick, and you need a defib to do it," said Mr Davies.

Ted Davies carried out CPR on his father

During the incident a delivery driver came "tootling down the road, so I sent him down to the village hall to get the nearest one," the son added.

Ted said he had done a course on CPR with the Presteigne Young Farmers Club.

"I knew there was a job to be done and I knew roughly what I had to do," he said.

"I haven't kissed [dad] since I was about four, and I was hoping it was probably going to stay that way but you've got to give him the kiss of life - that brings you back down to earth - and he lived to tell the tale."

Mum, Ninky Davies, said for her son to use CPR on his own father was "a massive thing to have to do".

"We're so proud of him, it was such a big traumatic event for him."

The defibrillator was successful in starting the patient's heart and he was taken to hospital by air ambulance.

The farmer has already auctioned a ewe with the proceeds going to the British Heart Foundation.

"That fortunately made twice as much as my other ewes," he said, adding the family would be raising more funds for them in future.