Senior Constable Jonathon Wright shares his story for the Traffic and Highway Patrol Easter long weekend blood drive.
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00:00 Hi, I'm Senior Constable Jono Wright. I'm attached to MacArthur Highway Patrol, currently
00:09 at Eaglevale, previously at Camden Pack at Narellin Police Station and I've been in
00:15 the job for coming up to 19 years. We'd set an RBT site and we had lane 1 blocked.
00:24 We'd been there for about 15 minutes. There were myself and a couple of other officers
00:30 standing at the back of a highway car in lane 1, just off to the side. And at that time
00:37 there was a distracted driver driving towards us, text messaging his friends and he's crashed
00:41 into the back of the highway car. Both myself and another officer were crushed between the
00:45 cars and I sustained a traumatic amputation of my right leg below my right knee.
00:51 Police have re-enacted the moment two highway patrol officers were hit by a car and badly
00:56 injured while setting up a random breath test near Campbelltown. Part of Campbelltown Road
01:00 at Lemire was shut last Friday night after Jacob Thornton allegedly ploughed into two
01:05 senior constables. Jonathan Wright had to have part of his leg amputated and colleague
01:10 Matthew Foley suffered broken bones. As a result of that I had heavy blood loss.
01:16 So I received five bags of blood through the surgeries. Without that blood I may not be
01:22 here today. So now for work I'm assisting South West Traffic Highway Patrol in regard
01:29 to community engagement. Within that role I participate in the U-Turn the Wheel program
01:36 which has been run for quite a while. In that program we talk about the main factors of
01:41 crashes and we talk about my injury and distracted driving. So as a result I sustained a traumatic
01:50 amputation of my right leg. I lost a very large amount of blood before the tourniquet
01:55 was applied and without that tourniquet I would have died due to blood loss. My message
02:02 would be we need to donate blood. Without blood I likely would not be here today.
02:08 (Music)
02:15 (Music)