Bears Jerrell Freeman Uses Heimlich to Save Choking Man at Airport Brisket Restaurant

Jerrell Freeman
Twitter
Dylan Gwinn
Austin, TX

NFL players can get very, very hungry. In this case, that hunger saved someone’s life.

Chicago Bears linebacker Jerrell Freeman found himself in a spot that a lot of people find themselves in when they’re in Austin, Texas: he had a hankering for some brisket.

So before catching his flight to training camp, Freeman ran over to the nearest brisket-serving establishment in the Austin airport. That’s where he encountered a choking man.

According to Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune, Freeman said he didn’t know what was going on at first. That the man looked disoriented, but not necessarily in danger.

According to Freeman the man appeared, “like he had forgotten something and was about to go running for it. But then he went around the table and started to look a little frantic. I’m thinking, ‘Man, this is odd. Maybe one of his kids walked off and he can’t find his kid or something?’”

In reality, the man was choking on brisket. A woman first attempted to perform the Heimlich. However, with the larger and stronger Freeman available, she stepped aside. Freeman had never performed the Heimlich before, but his mother, a nurse, had taught him how to do it.

“I grabbed him and tried to squeeze the life out of him,” Freeman said. “You’ve got to push in and up. So I did that and he started throwing up what he was choking on. I asked him if he was all right and he shook his head like ‘No!’

“I grabbed him again and hit him again with it. And when I put him down the second time, his eyes got big. He was like, ‘Oh, my god! I think you just saved my life, man!’ It was crazy.”

Both men eventually recovered from the excitement and sat down to eat their brisket:

Freeman said, “Crazy. Hey, I guess that was some good brisket. He wasn’t about to let that go to waste. You can’t get between a man and his brisket. I get it.”

Freeman indeed gets it. Marcus Ryan, the man Freeman saved, gets to live. And the NFL gets a story not involving guns, drugs, domestic violence, or prostitutes, as teams report to training camps.

A good deal all-around.

Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn

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