South Brunswick Municipal Worker Honored For Saving Man's Life

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, NJ - South Brunswick Township public works employee Brian Keith Jr. was honored last week by the Public Works Association of New Jersey for his heroic — and life-saving — actions last summer on a man who suddenly had a heart attack while working on police cars in the Township garage.

Brian Keith, Jr. was presented with the PWANJ’s Heroism Award at the Public Works Conference in Atlantic City last Wednesday.

Keith was chosen for the award because on August 16, 2016, as he was walking through the public works garage, he noticed a man lying unresponsive in the seat of a police car. Patch reported on the incident at the time: William Rodriguez, 60, a Bayonne man working as a technician for Triangle Communications, suffered cardiac arrest as he was installing a video camera inside a squad car.

Keith pulled Rodriguez out of the police cruiser and began performing CPR, as witnesses at the scene began calling 911. Officer Joseph Rausch was inside police headquarters when the call came over the police radio and he immediately grabbed a nearby portable defibrillator. He ran to his police car, and drove to the Public Works Building, arriving within two minutes of the initial call for service. He applied the defibrillator pads to Rodriguez’s chest as he and Keith continued CPR.

It wasn't until the third and final shock that Rodriguez had a pulse again and regained consciousness. He was transported to the hospital.

Keith has been with the South Brunswick Township Department of Public Works Utilities Division since 2007. He is also a former member of the Monmouth Junction Volunteer First Aid Squad.

Past Patch coverage: Police, DPW Worker Save Man's Life in South Brunswick Using CPR and Defibrillator