Uber Passenger, 41, Had a Brain Hemorrhage During His Ride. What the Driver Did Next Saved His Life (Exclusive)

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Uber Passenger, 41, Had a Brain Hemorrhage During His Ride. What the Driver Did Next Saved His Life (Exclusive)

Taras Zvir, who had recently began driving for Uber, picked up passenger Justin Anderson in Philadelphia on Feb. 25

Near the end of the ride to Bucks County, Pa., Anderson suffered what was later identified as a brain hemorrhage

Zvir, a former ambulance driver, administered CPR on Anderson until EMS arrived and took him to the hospital

A Philadelphia man who had only recently started working as an Uber driver helped save the life of his passenger experiencing a brain hemorrhage.

“I feel like anybody would’ve done it,” Taras Zvir, 38, of Northern Liberties, humbly tells PEOPLE about his heroic deed. “I don’t know. I guess I was raised to help. You just do it. You don’t think about it, you just do it.”

On the morning of Feb. 25, Zvir, who drives for Uber as a side gig while he is starting up his own company, picked up a passenger named Justin Anderson, 41, in Philadelphia. Anderson’s destination was Bucks County, where his job is located.

“We just started talking about music and stuff,” Zvir recalls about the 45-minute ride. “And he mentioned that he [drove for] Uber as well. So we were just talking about that for a little bit.”

As they were listening to music and nearing the end of the trip, Zvir noticed that Anderson’s head tilted and he appeared as if he was “suffocating.”

“His head was kind of bobbing up and down but he was still communicating,” Zvir recalls. “I was [like], ‘Justin, you okay? Do you need anything?’ I immediately rolled the windows down, blasted my A/C to try to see if it would make him feel a little better. But he was just getting worse and worse, and eventually he became unresponsive.”

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Zvir immediately called 911 and described Anderson’s symptoms to the dispatcher, who told him he needed to perform CPR on Anderson right away. Fortunately, Zvir knew CPR from his time as a former ambulance driver.

“I ran around the car,” he says. “I opened the door, placed him flat, made sure that his head wasn’t hitting the concrete because he didn’t have any support or anything. So once I placed him flat, I just started doing CPR and was doing it for maybe six to eight minutes.”

To his relief, Zvir heard the sounds of sirens in the distance as he continued to perform the life-saving measure on Anderson. He then stopped when the EMS arrived.

“They started working on him immediately,” Zvir recalls. “They did Narcan. They weren’t sure if it was a drug overdose or medical emergency, so I guess they had to cover everything.”

Anderson’s mother, Deborah, later wrote in a

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that her son suffered a spontaneous brain hemorrhage. A CT scan conducted after he was admitted to the hospital showed a large bleed on the right part of his brain. She added that her son underwent a craniotomy procedure to relieve the pressure on his brain. 

“Justin was diagnosed with a subdural hematoma (brain bleed), which was determined to be due to an AV fistula (an abnormal connection between an artery and a vein) that he most likely was born with but never knew he had,” Deborah wrote.

“As a result of the amount of blood from the subdural hematoma, pressure was put on his brain, which caused a midline shift and some brain tissue damage,” she continued.

At the time, Anderson remained unconscious but made some progress. In an update on March 29, Deborah wrote that her son was able to blink his eyes twice when she asked him two questions.

“This has never happened,” she wrote. “It definitely gives me more hope.”

Deborah said Anderson is a father of a 17-year-old girl and had just started a new job at the time of his medical emergency. She said it was fortunate that her son was not by himself when he suffered the hemorrhage.

“Had he been home alone, he would not be here today,” she wrote. “Had he not been in the back of that Uber, he would not be here today. He was only in the Uber because he was supposed to come back home from work with his assigned work van. Otherwise, he would have been driving his own car. I am also thankful for the Uber driver’s quick response to call 911.”

Zvir says he has been in touch with Deborah and hopes to see her son when he gets better

“I definitely want to meet him,” he says of Anderson. ” And I also, I just want to make sure that he recovers. I actually texted his mother yesterday just to get an update on him. So I’m keeping in touch with his family and hopefully he pulls through.”

The GoFundMe created by Anderson’s mom is hoping to raise money to pay for her son’s medical bills and other expenses. PEOPLE reached out to Deborah Anderson for comment.

Looking back now, Zvir says he didn’t think what he did was anything special. “I saw somebody needed help and I just helped. That’s it,” he says.

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