A PHONE company worker put his first aid training to good use when he helped save the life of an elderly jogger who stopped breathing and had no pulse after collapsing.

Richard Sellick and two colleagues administered CPR until paramedics arrived during the drama while they were working near Pendrathen, on St Mary’s, in the Isles of Scilly.

Richard, of Buckland Road, Taunton, said the man, now on the road to recovery, was almost given up for dead as he was not breathing and had no heartbeat for 40 minutes.

“We were working down by the beach when an elderly man came jogging past,” said Richard, who was installing superfast broadband for BT Open reach with two colleagues from Cornwall.

“Then 20 metres up the road he collapsed, we ran over to him and he’d stopped breathing, his chest had collapsed and his eyes were dilated.

“We rang for an ambulance and started to do CPR until the paramedics arrived.

“One of them used a defibrillator to shock the man, but there was still no heartbeat.

“I thought he was dead and the paramedic said to his colleague it was a sudden death.”

The man was flown to the mainland by helicopter to hospital in Truro and police later phoned married father-of-two Richard to say he is out of intensive care, talking and remembering everything up to the incident.

He was informed that the man was Angus Nicoll, head of the programme for influenza and other respiratory virus at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Sweden.

“We saved his life, which is an emotional feeling,” said Richard, aged 36.

“I’ve never done anything like this before.

“I did first aid training in my previous job, but you just have a laugh in the classes and never think you’ll have to use it."