UNT Head Coach Brittany Roth’s husband, Ben Roth, and their daughter were in the right place at the right time on Sunday December 22nd, and Roth was able to briefly save a life.
Brittany Roth has been the head coach at UNT since 2017 and Ben Roth is a paramedic and firefighter in Plano. They hold season tickets to the Lions games, and Ben Roth told a Detroit Newspaper they try to make “four to five games a year as a family.”
At the game on December 22nd between the Lions and the Bears, Ben and their daughter were sitting in club seats he described as “As close as you can be without actually being on the field.”
That was when he noticed someone in a North Texas shirt, which was shocking as neither the Lions nor the Bears are based anywhere near Denton, Texas, the location of UNT.
Roth asked the man to take a picture with him to send to Brittany who did not attend the game. After they took the photo, the two started talking, and the man happened to have two extra field passes he was looking to give to a father and daughter.
The two accepted, and made their way onto the field about an hour before the game started.
Moments after they made it onto the field, a man collapsed, and Roth went to work. While others on the field thought the man was having a seizure, Roth recognized the man looked like he was moments away from a heart attack. He yelled for an AED, telling the people around him that the man was about to lose his pulse, and he was right.
The man’s heart stopped beating and Roth started doing compressions before stepping back to let the State Troopers take over while he got the AED ready. He told the newspaper “I did a couple compressions, but I knew that we needed to do some more higher end medical stuff. CPR is one of those things that a lot of people can do with the right training.”
After one shock with the AED, the man’s heart rate came back and he regained consciousness.
He was transported to the hospital where he later passed away, but his family was grateful for the extra hours they were given with him.
Last week, the Lions honored Roth with tickets to the last regular season game against the Vikings, again giving Roth and his family field passes which he did not need to use to save a life this time.
Slante to Ben.