A father of three who was knocked into the path of a coach by a Lime hire bike has come face to face with the London paramedics who helped bring him back to life, in an emotional reunion more than a year after the crash that nearly killed him.
Victor Arotsky, 53, from Hendon, was out on a lunchtime run past the Houses of Parliament in June last year when the collision happened. The coach crushed his head and chest, and he went into cardiac arrest at the roadside as police officers fought to keep him alive.
Mr Arotsky spent four weeks in a coma, six weeks in a high dependency ward and a further month in a rehabilitation unit. He lost the sight in one eye, is partially sighted in the other and lost the hearing in one ear — injuries that have changed his life for ever. Yet he has returned to work, and now jogs 10 kilometres three or four times a week.
We first reported his remarkable story of survival, and the long road of his recovery. This week came the moment he had been waiting for: the chance to thank the people who saved him, in person.
He was reunited with the London Ambulance Service paramedics who treated him at the scene, including Scott Lummes, Charlotte Miller and Caitlin Gray — the clinicians who cleared his airway and helped him breathe on the worst day of his life.
“If it weren’t for you, my family would be without a father and husband,” he told them. “If I lived 1,000 more years there still would not be enough time for me to express the gratitude I have to everyone that helped rescue me that day. I hope you all realise how amazing you are and the vital service you provide.”
Because the crash happened yards from Parliament, officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Diplomatic Protection Unit were first to reach him. They freed him from beneath the coach and began CPR after his heart stopped. Paramedics and London’s Air Ambulance crews arrived soon after, cleared his airway and helped him breathe before rushing him to hospital.
Surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is vanishingly rare. In the UK, fewer than one in ten people who suffer one away from hospital survive, according to the British Heart Foundation — a statistic that makes Mr Arotsky’s recovery, and his return to running, little short of extraordinary. His case is a textbook example of the “chain of survival”: immediate CPR, a rapid specialist response and skilled hospital care, each link holding firm.
For the crews involved, the reunion carried its own weight. Paramedics answer the most harrowing calls imaginable, yet they rarely learn what becomes of the patients they fight to save — which is why meetings like this one stay with them for years. Ms Gray said she had been extremely worried for Victor when she arrived at the scene, describing injuries so severe it was clear he was critically unwell and needed urgent care.
“It has been brilliant to meet him again and see how well he is doing,” she said. “His positivity and sense of humour after such an awful accident is inspirational.”
Pauline Cranmer, chief paramedic at London Ambulance Service, praised the teamwork behind the rescue, calling it “a true team effort, with every person playing a vital role in his care”.
The crash remains a stark reminder of the dangers on the capital’s roads. Serious collisions continue to claim and change lives across London, and the speed of the emergency response is so often the difference between life and death.
For Mr Arotsky, though, the story is no longer about the crash — it is about the people who refused to let him die. More than a year on, still running, still working, still a father and husband, he finally got to say the two words that mattered most: thank you.
