Officials commended Doug Lang for helping an 88-year-old woman who’d fallen and hit her head. (Click to enlarge)
Red Bank’s governing body honored three people at its bimonthly meeting Wednesday night: two teachers and a borough employee who went to the aid of an injured elderly woman.
Doug Lang, who works in the public works department, was cited for “exemplary actions” in helping 88-year-old Muriel DeFazio, a now-retired school crossing guard, after she slipped and fell in her Oakland Street driveway on June 6.
DeFazio insisted to Lang that she was alright and didn’t need medical attention, she told redbankgreen. But she was bleeding heavily from the back of her head, partly owing to blood-thinning medication, said her son, retired police Captain Pete DeFazio.
After getting DeFazio settled in her house, Lang drove across town to alert her son to the situation.
Pete DeFazio took his mother to Riverview Medical Center where his wife, Kathy, and daughter, Diana Wieczerzak, are nurses. His mother wound up being hospitalized for three weeks, he said.
“If he didn’t happen to see her, who knows how long she’d have lain there,” Pete DeFazio said.
Lang was cited for averting an outcome that “could have been much worse,” the borough council said in a resolution. Here it is: RB res 12-161.
Muriel DeFazio says she won’t be returning to her post as a crossing guard at Broad Street and Peters Place, a job she took in 1995 after retiring from a 38-year career in banking.
The council also honored Brandy Balthazar as Red Bank Primary School teacher of the year (RB res 12-125) and Theresa Davidson as middle school teacher of the year (RB res 12-160).
