José Luis Moris is a Sevillian national police officer who works covering the night in Puente de Vallecas (Madrid). Last Wednesday, like so many other times, he left his night shift and took the train to return to Seville and join his wife and newborn daughter, just a few months old. It was a trip he made weekly to reunite with his family. On this occasion he took the Iryo that left at 7:54 for the capital of Seville. Dressed in his usual work equipment, which he always carries just in case, and which included a first aid kit distributed in the pockets of a vest, he sat in his seat. Just 59 minutes later, knocked out by the tremendous blow that his convoy suffered, stopped near the Urda station (Toledo), when it was hit from behind by an AVE, he would find himself immersed in a war scenario putting out fires and making tourniquets. Her work, like that of two other agents from the UFAM (the Family and Women's Care Unit of the National Police) who were also on the train on the way to a conference, was providential in the first moments of the brutal incident.
Noelia and Carmela, a police officer and a faculty member at UFAM Central, had taken the same train to attend a course in Ciudad Real, where they would give a talk on gender violence. The three agents, without previously knowing each other, met in the middle of the catastrophe. They emerged almost unscathed from the crash, with minor bruises, but another colleague, who was traveling on the AVE that morning to Seville, Iván Romano Ramos, 42 years old, stationed at the General Police Station for Citizen Security and originally from Alcalá de Guadaira, suffered much worse luck. The town council and his relatives confirmed his death on Saturday afternoon.
“First a fire broke out in the car and we managed to put it out,” said Moris, still in uniform, going live on a Canal Sur Andalucía program. "And, from there, the catastrophe begins: people screaming, people locked up, many irons, seats... Those of us who were there tried to get those we could out: first a boy, who was almost outside, although with a lot of material on him, and while we were doing it, we heard some screams below, from another man who was there...", he said shortly before breaking down crying in front of the cameras.
His small first aid kit was crucial in his performance, as it allowed him to apply at least two tourniquets to injured people who were losing a lot of blood. “It is knowledge of first aid and a vocation that 99% of police officers have within them who, in the event of a catastrophe, automatically assume responsibility and get to work,” a spokesperson for the National Police later explained, in whose official X profile they posted a thread describing the actions of the three police officers.
“At the height of Urda, sharp blows, the train had suffered an impact,” the thread began. “José Luis helped evacuate the passengers but a fire started and he entered again through the emergency window, took two fire extinguishers and his first aid kit and with another passenger put out the fire,” he said. “He helped several passengers and met Noelia and Carmela: “I'm a police officer,” he told them, “we are too,” they responded. And they began to collaborate and coordinate in helping the injured while the Emergency services arrived.
They put aside the shock and got to work, carrying out the first triage tasks, that is, evaluating those injured who could be helped. And so the stories of heroes and survivors of the accident begin to intersect. Because among those injured people who were treated was Rafa, Rafael Hernández, a man trapped in the mass of iron, who has starred in one of the exciting survival stories after the accident. His wife Carmen, and his daughter, also Carmen, only have words of gratitude for the actions of the agents, specifically for the police officer Noelia, to whom they mainly attribute the credit for the man getting out of there alive. Today he remains in the ICU of the Toledo hospital and is progressing favorably, according to what was reported by his daughter, a nurse by profession.
Since then, Noelia has been her guardian angel for the family, because she put a tourniquet on her leg that prevented her from bleeding out and kept her conscious. To the point that he was able to talk to his wife on the phone: “Don't worry, baby, that's what he affectionately calls me, I'm out of this,” Carmen said her husband told her. Noelia tried to keep Rafa from losing consciousness and asked him about his life. He even asked her not to call his daughter Inés, who lives in Milan, so as not to worry her.
Carmen said that, the next day, she spoke on the phone with Noelia, in a very exciting conversation. The police, through tears, inquired about Rafa's condition and Carmen was able to express all her gratitude: "You saved my husband, I mean, it's my life," she told him, before being able to meet in person "when this nightmare is over."
