Nurse honored for saving life of man stabbed in McAllen

EDINBURG — On the evening of Monday, Dec. 11, Natalia Moure had just completed a 12-hour shift at DHR Health, where she works as a registered nurse.

As she drove home she noticed a man in the middle of the street, and he appeared to be bleeding. She said that he had blood on his face, his ear and his arm.

“He was saying that he needed help for his family,” she recalled. “He was trying to guide everyone to his family. He was so focused on that that he maybe didn’t notice that he was bleeding to death.”

The man had been stabbed multiple times, and was fearful that the suspect could still be in the area. Moure, 35, pulled her car over and asked the man to lay down.

“Because I saw other people calling 9-1-1, I knew help was on the way so I felt kind of safe to get out of the car,” she recalled. “I told him to get out of the street and to lay down in the gas station parking lot. He laid down, I grabbed a T-shirt from my car and I tourniqueted his arm.”

Police arrived soon after and provided the nurse with QuikClot to help stop the bleeding before ambulance workers arrived.

“Honestly, I was very calm,” she recalled. “Because of the nature of my work and what we do all the time, I was very calm. I just felt at peace to get out of my car and help. It was like God telling me, ‘It’s OK. Go.’ I didn’t really think much of it.”

“I just wanted to help him,” she continued. “I knew he was going to die if he didn’t stop walking around and bleeding like that.”

Daniel Ramirez, a registered nurse and trauma coordinator at DHR Health, said that individuals who suffer similar traumatic bleeding events typically have three to five minutes before they bleed out. He said that Moure’s timing and quick thinking to use a T-shirt as a tourniquet played a large part in saving the man’s life.

“It gives you a very narrow window in which to act, so you have to act quickly,” Ramirez said. “What she did was extraordinary. It takes a very special person. Not just anybody can just step up to the plate and commit to that act, especially on a stranger.”

As a result of Moure’s quick thinking and actions from that evening, she was able to save the man’s life. For that, she was recognized for her efforts Wednesday morning with a quick ceremony at DHR Health.

Surrounded by her co-workers just outside the critical care unit on the second floor of DHR Health, Moure was presented with the DAISY (Diseases Attacking the Immune System) Award after being nominated by the man whose life she saved, as well as the Trauma Nurse Excellence Award.

Moure said that she did not realize the gravity of the situation until the ceremony, when she was able to watch a video of the man she saved thanking her for her actions.

“That’s when it really hit me,” she said. “Here at work, we do this all the time. All of us here save lives here at work inside the hospital. This was a little different because it was out in the street. I guess it took him saying that I saved his life because sometimes we don’t think about it that way. We just think about doing interventions and doing everything we can. It’s just what we do.”

Moure’s immediate supervisor, Intensive Care Unit Director Anna Martinez, said that she was proud of her, but also in disbelief by the entire scenario.

“As a nurse, we go into nursing because we want to help people, our patients and the community,” Martinez said. “This situation that she was placed in is a testament to her choices in becoming a nurse and helping those around her — especially in the community, first-hand. I imagine that it must have been really scary, but her quick thinking as a nurse and her training kicked in, and she just did what needed to be done in that moment.”

Editor’s note: This story’s headline was changed for clarity. 

RELATED READING:

California man dead in fatal police shooting outside McAllen Public Library