Rome: Pellegrina Taken Ill, Saved by Off-duty Agent

They were both visiting St. Peter's Square and, without knowing each other, they were walking next to each other. Alfonso, a policeman on duty at the State Police Station of Lucera, in Puglia, is in Rome, in these days, attached to the State Police Station of Borgo for the needs related to public order and safety services on the occasion of the Jubilee of Hope. “Getting off” his morning shift, he had decided to spend an afternoon as a tourist in the company of his wife and children, who had come to visit him for the weekend.

That day, he wanted to retrace with them the same streets that he watches at night with his colleagues, but, for once, without wearing the "blue jacket". In the office, however, he did not forget that “policeman's eye” is the Police Chief of Rome, on the eve of the first Jubilee event, had recommended that it always be kept wide open.

Right at the height of the colonnade of Via della Conciliazione, while he was proudly showing his children "what dad does when he is away from home", Alfonso notices, a few steps away from him, a woman who, presumably suffering from an epileptic fit, has started to lose her balance and swerve. At that point, he realized there wasn't a minute to waste. Before she collapsed and hit the ground, Alfonso rushed over to grab her and place her head on his arm like a pillow.

When then, despite having carefully adopted all the necessary precautions, he saw her in an unconscious state, with cyanotic lips and eyes drooping, waiting for the intervention of the medical personnel, with cold blood and a quick maneuver, he managed to prevent the woman from suffocating due to the torsion of the tongue that was obstructing her oral cavity.

When she finally opened her eyes, "embraced" by the smiling and reassuring looks of Alfonso and his family, Begum did not remember anything. Only after hearing what had happened, once entrusted to the care of the paramedics, she stretched out her arm as if to call Alfonso and, with a grateful smile, thanked him.