The sister of Russell Brown who was stabbed to death at a party in Bethnal Green is undertaking a daring tandem skydive to raise funds and say ‘thank-you’ to London’s Air Ambulance team from Whitechapel who tried to save him.
Emma Brown was given the chance to say farewell to Russell—known as Barty to the family—by the doctors and paramedics from Whitechapel who she says kept him alive before his life ended 11 hours later.
Russell died at the Royal London after the stabbing at Nelson Gardens in September 2016.
It was the same hospital where the 26-year-old was due to donate a kidney for a sick relative.
“We wouldn’t have got a chance to say goodbye without the medical team’s amazing efforts ,” Emma tells next Thursday’s East London Advertiser.
“They arrived at Nelson Gardens finding my brother almost or already dead and performed open heart surgery on the spot.
“The helicopter pilot even travelled back to the hospital to collect more blood to save Barty’s life.”
Russell was stabilised, then flown to the hospital and rushed straight to the operating theatre.
“All of the hospital team that night never once gave up on him,” Emma recalls. “They tried so hard to save Barty—but after 11 hours it was clear he was just too tired and he passed away.
“I sat and held my baby brother’s hand as I watched his heart slowly beat to a stop.”
So the 31-year-old school admin officer from Bethnal Green is braving a tandem skydive on April 22 with one of Russell’s close friends to raise funds for the air ambulance charity that is kept flying through public support and is appealing for donations to the family’s online JustGiving crowdfunding page.
“Barty’s death certificate would have had ‘Nelson Gardens’ as his place of death, had the helicopter not been there,” Emma added.
“That may seem insignificant, but means a lot to my family that he passed away at the Royal London.”
Russell, a former Morpeth School pupil who worked in the motor repair trade in Mile End, died in the hospital where he had gone for tests to donate a kidney to his aunt Tracy Happe who is living on dialysis. He got the results that the was fit enough only days before he was stabbed.
But sadly his organs could not be used after his passing, because he had lost too much blood in the attack.
London’s Air Ambulance charity provides medical care at the scene anywhere in Greater London, which includes an advanced trauma doctor and paramedic, performing advanced medical treatment normally only found in hospital A&E, in life threatening situations.
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