Friend Tried to Save UNC Student’s Life

CARRBORO, N.C. — A friend who found David Palmer Shannon Saturday night at a concrete plant attempted to save his life by giving him chest compressions.

Shannon, a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, apparently died after falling about 40 feet from some machinery at Ready Mixed Concrete Company off Brewer Lane in Carrboro, according to Carrboro police.

In a recording of a 911 phone call made when Shannon’s friends found him Saturday night at 10:30 p.m., the caller states that they had just found him at a construction site on Guthrie Avenue.

“We found our friend. He’s not breathing,” the caller said. “He’s in a Carrboro construction site on Guthrie Avenue. We need an ambulance or something.”

At the same time, one of the other people at the scene called 911, and he told a different dispatcher, “We were missing our friend today. We checked his cell location, and we just found him.”

That caller told the dispatcher that his friend had cuts all over him. When that dispatcher realized that another dispatcher was talking to another person from the same incident, he told him to hang up and they would get the information from the other caller.

The first caller struggled to remain calm, but at times his voice broke.

“We haven’t talked to him all day,” he said. “We didn’t know where he was.”

Hurry, he told the dispatcher, he’s not breathing.

Once the dispatcher was able to get a good description of where they were, the dispatcher gave the caller instructions on how perform chest compressions.

“Lay your friend on his back,” the dispatcher said.

The dispatcher told him they were going to do 600 chest compressions or until help arrived. He said he would count along. The two began counting, and at times, it sounded as though the caller was trying to keep from crying as they counted, 1, 2, 3, on up to 57.

The dispatcher told him he was doing a good job and urged him to keep going.

The counting stopped when the caller said the paramedics had arrived. The caller then began to cry, unable to answer the dispatcher’s questions about his friend’s condition.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he cried out.

The call ended.

Shannon was last seen on Friday night.