Carlos Arredondo, a 52-year-old Costa Rican immigrant, is being hailed as a hero for rushing headfirst into the chaos of the Boston explosions to help the wounded, using his own clothing to staunch people’s bleeding, according to The Guardian.
With his friend John Mixon, Arredondo helped load a young man into a wheelchair and roll him to receive medical attention. In images of the bombing that circulated across the country, Arredondo appears to be pinching shut a severed artery in the young man’s thigh, according to NBC News. (Scroll down for image. Warning, it may make some uncomfortable.)
“I kept talking to him. I kept saying ‘Stay with me, stay with me,’" Arredondo said, according to the Portland Press Herald.
Arredondo says he managed to help the man to an ambulance, in a video uploaded to YouTube.
“There was so many people, an old lady next to me begging me for help, begging me for help,” Arredondo says in a video uploaded to YouTube. “But I could only help one at the time, so I helped that young man. He told me the name, but I forgot the name.”
It’s not the first time Arredondo’s been in the news.
When his son Alexander, a U.S. Marine, died in Iraq in 2004, Arredondo locked himself into a van and set it on fire, with five gallons of gasoline inside, according to the U.K. Independent.
Arredondo survived, though he suffered second- and third-degree burns on 20 percent of his body, according to the New York Times. Arredondo went on to become a peace activist, traveling the country with a mobile memorial to his son.
“As long as there are marines fighting and dying in Iraq, I’m going to share my mourning with the American people,” Arredondo told the Times in 2007.
Arredondo lost his other son, Brian, when he committed suicide in 2011, according to the Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Arredondo was at the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday to cheer on a participant who was running in memory of his fallen son -- one of a larger group of people running for fallen soldiers, according to the Portland Press Herald.
UPDATE: This post was updated at 1:40 p.m. to add the picture of Carlos Arredondo helping a young man to safety in a wheelchair.
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