A call for more AEDs at city businesses after woman dies at local mall

A Saskatoon woman is calling for more automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in public places after her mom collapsed in a city mall and couldn’t be saved.

Krista Kut says her mom, Valerie Caspick, 52, was with her dad, Darrell Caspick and walking through the Confederation Mall when she collapsed.  At first, she says, he thought she fell, but quickly noticed she was unresponsive.  He called 911, and in the meantime a security guard from the mall tried CPR.

“The first responders asked (the security guard) to get the AED and he responded that there wasn’t one in the mall,” she said.

When she heard this later from her dad, she was very upset.

“I was genuinely really pissed off.  I had to actually leave the room that we were in to go and find my mind again. This is insane.  How do they not have this?”

Kut believes her mom may still be alive had the mall had an AED. Now she’s advocating for change.  She says she won’t stop until these potentially life-saving devices are mandatory in public places.

“I just want change, that’s all I want.  I don’t want any legal action or anything like that.  I just want this to be a mandatory thing.  It’s insane that it’s not already.”

Kut says she has been in contact with Troy Davies from Medavie Health Services and he told her every minute you don’t have an AED your chance of survival goes down 10 percent.

“Which is huge,” she said.

Since her mom died last Tuesday, she’s heard of the Confederation Mall and nine other businesses getting AEDs.

Kut, who is a nursing student in Saskatoon, says she will continue to push for them to be mandatory in places that serve large groups of people.

“I am not going to stop until it’s changed,” she said.