Chris Weidman details harrowing encounter that rescued elderly neighbor

A typical Thursday afternoon quickly turned dire for Chris Weidman, as the UFC’s middleweight champion found himself alone fighting against the clock to save the life of an elderly neighbor who had begun bleeding profusely from several wounds outside of her home after tumbling through a glass table.

“I was supposed to go pick up Stephen Thompson and his brother at the airport, LaGuardia, this morning,” Weidman explained to MMAFighting.com. “I was supposed to pick them up but their flight was late. So I was trying to clean out my car and it was a torrential downpour this morning. So I’m cleaning it out and all of a sudden I started hearing this noise — Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! — just repeating. It was so loud, but with the rain it was hard to figure out where it was coming from or what it really was.

“I looked over at the direction it was coming from and could barely see somebody in their driveway, I’m pretty sure on the phone, getting soaked by the rain. First I thought they could’ve been yelling at someone, but their body language wasn’t like they were yelling; it wasn’t even like they were making noise. I was like, it must be kids making some weird noises or something, so I went back to cleaning my car. I didn’t want to look again, act like I’m a weirdo or something, so I’m just trying to take the clothes out of my car and clean it up a little bit.

“And as I do, I keep hearing it. So I get in my car, I’m soaking wet at this point, I started driving toward the direction where this house was — it was like two houses across the street from my right. That’s not the way out, but before I head out, let me go that way just to see where the noise is coming from. And there was a figure in the driveway still. I was thinking it was somebody fighting with their husband or something on the phone, to be honest, but I started going that way. I had my window down and I started listening. And as I’m driving past the person, I could realize it’s an older lady and she’s yelling: ‘Help me! Help me!’

“She getting soaking wet. So I jump out of the car and I run over to her, and she’s bleeding everywhere. All over the place. I run over, she drops her phone and begs, ‘Help me! Help me!’ So I take her and I bring her into her garage, and as I’m doing that, I try to find a place for her to sit down — I was going to put her on the floor but she had a stool, so I grab that, put her on the stool, and as I’m doing that I’m calling 911. I call 911 and am like, ‘Listen, I have a really elderly lady here, she’s bleeding really bad, doesn’t look good. We need someone here immediately.’ So they transfer me to emergency services.

“They transfer me, but nothing happens. I don’t hear anything. Just nothing for a good 20 or 30 seconds, so I hang up. Then I call back 911 again and the same thing happens again. I explain the story, they transfer me to emergency services, and again nothing happens.

“I’m like, what the f**k?! So I call one of my friends who’s a police officer in the precinct, I call him up and say, ‘Listen, you need to call cops or emergency (paramedics). I’m with this lady here and it’s not looking good here, she’s bleeding all over the place and I’m trying to help her but I don’t know if she’s about to die. I’m freaking out, we need someone here right away.’ So he said, ‘Alright, I got it.’ He hangs up and that’s what eventually got people there. But I’m holding her, and it basically felt like 20 or 30 minutes before someone was there. The entire time she’s going in and out a little bit, she’s getting very dizzy.

“And she’s a bloody mess, so I grabbed a bunch of paper towels and I was trying to hold the paper towels on her wounds — she had big wounds and she was bleeding so much, her whole body was covered in blood, I didn’t know where the blood was really 100-percent coming from. I didn’t know if it was multiple wounds. She’s saying she fell into a glass table. So just kept going through paper towels trying to keep pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. I ended up finding out later that the reason she was bleeding so much is that she was on different heart medications and stuff that thins her blood.

“So I was there, trying to have her talk about normal things to distract her, but she’s saying, ‘I wanted to live one more year! I wanted to live one more year!’ I’m telling her, ‘You’re fine! You’re fine! You’re not dying today! You’re going to be fine! People are coming right now, they’re going to take you and stitch up your head, you’re going to be fine! You’re not dying!’ I’m trying to talk to her about her dogs, anything to take her mind off it. She’s screaming over and over, so I’m trying to get her to breathe normal, relax her breathing. I felt like I was in a corner almost, trying to get her to calm down between rounds a little bit, let her know she’s going to be okay.

“Finally the paramedics get here and they bring her to a hospital. And I was her guy, I was just making sure she’s okay the whole time because I was there from the beginning. And then once they took her — right before the Demian Maia fight, my uncle fell down the stairs and he bled all over the place. He ended up dying on the bottom of our stairs and they never cleaned it up, so me and my dad and my cousin — his daughter — had to clean up his blood on the spot he died. Peel tiles and scrub tiles. It was like the worst thing I ever had to go through. So when I was there, I just wanted to make sure there was no blood. I tried to clean up as much blood as possible, so when the daughter gets home it’s not a complete crime scene, she’s not completely freaking out.

“We don’t know yet (if she’s okay),” Weidman continued. “I don’t know, she went to the emergency room. She was still coherent when she was leaving, especially for a 94-year-old lady. She was telling me she has five grandchildren, I was trying to get her to talk about normal things because she couldn’t stop freaking out. She was grabbing her neck and, I don’t know, it was a very messy situation. I found that wound on her head, I thought her neck was bleeding, and she was saying she had bleeding all down her shirt, but I think it was blood dripping.

“I’m very lucky and blessed that I actually went that way to see what the heck that noise was, because otherwise the block that I live on is pretty much a dead end. No one drives down there, and she was in shock. She wasn’t able to make phone calls. She had her phone in her hand, but she wasn’t going to be able to make a phone call. She said she called 911 but nothing was happening, they never got a call from her. So she was smart, she crawled outside and was yelling ‘help me’ in the middle of the freaking rain, but no one was around. No one was around at all. I just happened to be jumping in my car running and I heard that noise and I checked it out. I don’t know how much longer she could’ve been able to live like that.

“I definitely have a lot more respect for everybody who does that type of thing every single day, because this is a traumatic situation for me to be a part of. What the paramedics do, they’re so calm and they’re doing that everyday. They’re doing that on a daily basis. They’re the heroes and no one is hearing about it. I just happened to be at the right place, right time.”

A typical Thursday afternoon quickly turned dire for Chris Weidman, as the UFC’s middleweight champion found himself alone fighting against the clock to save the life of an elderly neighbor who had begun bleeding profusely from several wounds outside of her home after tumbling through a glass table.

“I was supposed to go pick up Stephen Thompson and his brother at the airport, LaGuardia, this morning,” Weidman explained to MMAFighting.com. “I was supposed to pick them up but their flight was late. So I was trying to clean out my car and it was a torrential downpour this morning. So I’m cleaning it out and all of a sudden I started hearing this noise — Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! — just repeating. It was so loud, but with the rain it was hard to figure out where it was coming from or what it really was.

“I looked over at the direction it was coming from and could barely see somebody in their driveway, I’m pretty sure on the phone, getting soaked by the rain. First I thought they could’ve been yelling at someone, but their body language wasn’t like they were yelling; it wasn’t even like they were making noise. I was like, it must be kids making some weird noises or something, so I went back to cleaning my car. I didn’t want to look again, act like I’m a weirdo or something, so I’m just trying to take the clothes out of my car and clean it up a little bit.

“And as I do, I keep hearing it. So I get in my car, I’m soaking wet at this point, I started driving toward the direction where this house was — it was like two houses across the street from my right. That’s not the way out, but before I head out, let me go that way just to see where the noise is coming from. And there was a figure in the driveway still. I was thinking it was somebody fighting with their husband or something on the phone, to be honest, but I started going that way. I had my window down and I started listening. And as I’m driving past the person, I could realize it’s an older lady and she’s yelling: ‘Help me! Help me!’

“She getting soaking wet. So I jump out of the car and I run over to her, and she’s bleeding everywhere. All over the place. I run over, she drops her phone and begs, ‘Help me! Help me!’ So I take her and I bring her into her garage, and as I’m doing that, I try to find a place for her to sit down — I was going to put her on the floor but she had a stool, so I grab that, put her on the stool, and as I’m doing that I’m calling 911. I call 911 and am like, ‘Listen, I have a really elderly lady here, she’s bleeding really bad, doesn’t look good. We need someone here immediately.’ So they transfer me to emergency services.

“They transfer me, but nothing happens. I don’t hear anything. Just nothing for a good 20 or 30 seconds, so I hang up. Then I call back 911 again and the same thing happens again. I explain the story, they transfer me to emergency services, and again nothing happens.

“I’m like, what the f**k?! So I call one of my friends who’s a police officer in the precinct, I call him up and say, ‘Listen, you need to call cops or emergency (paramedics). I’m with this lady here and it’s not looking good here, she’s bleeding all over the place and I’m trying to help her but I don’t know if she’s about to die. I’m freaking out, we need someone here right away.’ So he said, ‘Alright, I got it.’ He hangs up and that’s what eventually got people there. But I’m holding her, and it basically felt like 20 or 30 minutes before someone was there. The entire time she’s going in and out a little bit, she’s getting very dizzy.

“And she’s a bloody mess, so I grabbed a bunch of paper towels and I was trying to hold the paper towels on her wounds — she had big wounds and she was bleeding so much, her whole body was covered in blood, I didn’t know where the blood was really 100-percent coming from. I didn’t know if it was multiple wounds. She’s saying she fell into a glass table. So just kept going through paper towels trying to keep pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. I ended up finding out later that the reason she was bleeding so much is that she was on different heart medications and stuff that thins her blood.

“So I was there, trying to have her talk about normal things to distract her, but she’s saying, ‘I wanted to live one more year! I wanted to live one more year!’ I’m telling her, ‘You’re fine! You’re fine! You’re not dying today! You’re going to be fine! People are coming right now, they’re going to take you and stitch up your head, you’re going to be fine! You’re not dying!’ I’m trying to talk to her about her dogs, anything to take her mind off it. She’s screaming over and over, so I’m trying to get her to breathe normal, relax her breathing. I felt like I was in a corner almost, trying to get her to calm down between rounds a little bit, let her know she’s going to be okay.

“Finally the paramedics get here and they bring her to a hospital. And I was her guy, I was just making sure she’s okay the whole time because I was there from the beginning. And then once they took her — right before the Demian Maia fight, my uncle fell down the stairs and he bled all over the place. He ended up dying on the bottom of our stairs and they never cleaned it up, so me and my dad and my cousin — his daughter — had to clean up his blood on the spot he died. Peel tiles and scrub tiles. It was like the worst thing I ever had to go through. So when I was there, I just wanted to make sure there was no blood. I tried to clean up as much blood as possible, so when the daughter gets home it’s not a complete crime scene, she’s not completely freaking out.

“We don’t know yet (if she’s okay),” Weidman continued. “I don’t know, she went to the emergency room. She was still coherent when she was leaving, especially for a 94-year-old lady. She was telling me she has five grandchildren, I was trying to get her to talk about normal things because she couldn’t stop freaking out. She was grabbing her neck and, I don’t know, it was a very messy situation. I found that wound on her head, I thought her neck was bleeding, and she was saying she had bleeding all down her shirt, but I think it was blood dripping.

“I’m very lucky and blessed that I actually went that way to see what the heck that noise was, because otherwise the block that I live on is pretty much a dead end. No one drives down there, and she was in shock. She wasn’t able to make phone calls. She had her phone in her hand, but she wasn’t going to be able to make a phone call. She said she called 911 but nothing was happening, they never got a call from her. So she was smart, she crawled outside and was yelling ‘help me’ in the middle of the freaking rain, but no one was around. No one was around at all. I just happened to be jumping in my car running and I heard that noise and I checked it out. I don’t know how much longer she could’ve been able to live like that.

“I definitely have a lot more respect for everybody who does that type of thing every single day, because this is a traumatic situation for me to be a part of. What the paramedics do, they’re so calm and they’re doing that everyday. They’re doing that on a daily basis. They’re the heroes and no one is hearing about it. I just happened to be at the right place, right time.”