A British man was recently taken to hospital in Birmingham after he died – for 17 MINUTES.

Daniel Turner, 28, from Hereford was with his partner Elishia Paxman, 25, and their children returning home from a christening on August 14.

His devastated partner says one moment he was laughing and dancing, the next he had “dropped down dead.”

Thanks to an off duty police officer who performed CPR and him knowing a paramedic who lived nearby, they were able to work on Daniel until the ambulance crews arrived.

Elishia told GloucestershireLive : “We had been to a christening where I was asked to be god mother. It was a busy day with Daniel and I running around after the children playing on the bouncy castle.

“A friend had come to pick us up at 9.30pm. All of us, including Daniel were singing and dancing in the car and then he just dropped dead instantly.

“We were literally five minutes away from home. My friend stopped the car and we ran around to get him out of the car. I started doing CPR on him.

“An off duty police officer stopped and took over the CPR but then said he knew a paramedic who lives three doors away from where we were and he went to get him.

“I am still in shock and trying to process it. People stopped and blocked the windows so the children could not see what was happening to Daniel.”

She said: “I sat there with his head in my hands and I remember I was just screaming at him to come back.

“I was just saying ‘come on Dan, come on Dan’.

“It is a bit of a blur, but seeing someone being defibrillated is very much the worst thing I have ever seen in my life.

“I had to step away from him when they shocked him, but the panic, I was telling them not to stop and to do everything they can.”

Elishia said: “He was rushed by ambulance to Hereford hospital. I was taken by the other ambulance to the hospital ten minutes later as two crews had arrived. Daniel had had a cardiac arrest.

“The paramedics were so good. They did not want to leave me and stayed with me right up until my mum arrived to be with me.”

Elishia said: “We got to hospital at around 11.15pm. By the time I had arrived the staff had asked me to wait in the family room. That was quite traumatic as you know this is where a lot of families have bad news given to them.

“They explained to me they had put him into a medically induced coma.

“He was meant to be in that for I think around 36 hours, however he managed to wake himself up after 20 hours. Then the staff tried to sedate him but it did not really work and he was sleeping on and off.

“Now he has short term memory loss. On Sunday night he must have called me about 20 times because he had forgotten we had spoken.

“He was in the intensive care unit. He had a full body CT scan and a brain scan.

“They found a shadow on his brain but that could have been a stroke from the resuscitation.

“He woke and was so confused as to what had happened. I saw him on the Monday afterwards but I had left him on the Saturday night in a coma surrounded by nine doctors.

“It is a such a lot to cope with having someone dead in your arms and then to see them awake.”

Daniel has since been transferred to a hospital in Birmingham where he is currently being looked after by a specialist electrical physician who is one of two practising in England.

Elishia said: “He went to Birmingham hospital after a week in Hereford.

“I had been asked if Daniel had been feeling unwell, and really the only thing I could think of was he was sweating a lot. We put that down to running around with the children and playing on the bouncy castle, but it is a sign of a heart attack.

“I was called by the hospital to say I could go there at 10pm on August 22 to say goodbye to him before he went to Birmingham.

“Due to Covid I am not able to visit him at hospital in Birmingham.

“From the day he woke he has been confused and is trying to piece everything together. The last thing he remembers is being sat in the church on the day of the christening.

“He knows who we all are but just forgets the short term at the moment.”

She said: “Daniel is a really lucky man. I have reached out and been able to speak to the officer and paramedic who helped Daniel and when he is better Daniel would like to be ale to thank them for himself.

“Daniel will be having an operation in the next two days to implant a defibrillator. This is to send an electrical shock to his heart if it were to slow again in the future.

“He had been having stress tests on a running machine at hospital and he seems to be doing well.

“We have had tremendous support from friends and family. I have not been on my own since this happened, and we are so thankful.”

It is too early to know what the long term implications of Daniel’s heart condition are.