A New Year’s Eve celebration turned into a nightmare when a Nebraska man choked on a piece of meat at a restaurant and a doctor tried to perform a tracheotomy with a dinner knife.
Brian O’Neill and his wife, Joan, were ushering in the New Year with friends at The Grey Plume restaurant in Omaha when the morsel became lodged in his airway, the Omaha World-Herald reported.
While eatery staffers called 911, five men — including the physician and an off-duty police sergeant — performed the Heimlich maneuver on the choking man.
Several attempts to dislodge the meat failed, so the doctor decided to perform an emergency tracheotomy with a knife — but was unsuccessful, authorities said.
Medical personnel finally were able to open O’Neill’s airway in the ambulance or shortly after arriving at the hospital, his brother told the paper.
O’Neill, 51, who is on life support, sells office furniture at Duet Resource Group in Omaha and was “still holding on” Monday night, Mike O’Neill said.
“It was just a bad freak accident,” he said.
Brian was expected to be weaned off sedation medications at Nebraska Medical Center and checked for responses after being deprived of oxygen, the brother said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people attended a service Monday evening at St. Robert Bellarmine Catholic Church, where worshipers prayed for the longtime baseball and basketball coach at the parish school.
“We would like to thank everyone for their prayers,” Mike said. “The family is still hanging on to hope … for a miracle. No one should ever have to say goodbye to their brother or a loved one in this fashion. It’s just awful, just awful.”
Longtime friend Rick Pane told KETV: “We are going to pray for Brian. We’re going to pray for a miracle and we’ve got faith.”
His friends call O’Neill “The Mayor” because he knows so many people.
“He’s a great guy, a great family guy with two twin boys. He has a great wife, just a good family, ” brother-in-law Paul Miller told the station.
The family stressed that doctors told them the tracheotomy did not make the situation worse. The piece of meat was buried deep in his chest.