WHY WE FIGHT…

In the early hours of New Years Day 2022, our beautiful 18 year old son/brother/friend Jamie, suffered a cardiac arrest. Jamie was just at his friends house watching fireworks and welcoming in the New Year.

Jamie's friends called an ambulance and started to do CPR on him. There was a defibrillator nearby, but they soon realised that it was locked inside the school, so they would not be able to access it. A policeman was the first emergency service to reach Jamie, but unbelievabley he did not have a defibrillator in his car. Jamie waited a catastrophic 17.33 minutes for an ambulance. Although paramedics did manage to get Jamie's heart beating again, the oxygen starvation to his brain meant we had to say goodbye to him on January 5th 2022. Jamie had signed the organ donor register 3 times since he was 16 and he saved 5 lives on the night we lost him, this included an 8 month old baby girl with a life saving part liver transplant.

We started OurJay fundraising on 26th January, to purchase a 24/7 accessible defibrillator for Ashlawn School (which cost approx £1500)...we quickly realised that we'd reached double the target..so we decided to keep going. We have so far raised £250,000 and we have just installed our 129 accessible defibrillator, with a further 15 already waiting to be installed across Warwickshire. But, we keep going for our boy! Accessible defibrillators are needed, everywhere. Cardiac arrest can happen to anyone, anywhere, any time at any age. With a defibrillator available within 8 minutes, it can increase the chance of a persons survival by up to 70%

We appreciate all of the support we have be given as a family and we will continue to fight for change, in memory of our amazing precious boy, Our Jamie 💙