By Dave Eck
Enquirer contributor

BLUE ASH - Hamilton County sheriff's officials are praising five passers-by - including three nurses - for rescuing a Hamilton County sheriff's deputy who suffered a heart attack while on patrol Wednesday evening.

The passers-by called 911 and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Cpl. James F. Knapp, 49, until paramedics arrived, sheriff's spokesman Steve Barnett said. Cpl. Knapp was in critical condition Thursday at Jewish Hospital in Kenwood.

"Without their involvement the officer would not be alive today," Barnett said. "People that are willing to get involved are good people. They don't think of themselves as heroes, but good people normally don't."

Mike Huston of Blue Ash was behind the deputy's cruiser at a red light at the Kenwood Road connector exit off Ronald Reagan Highway just after 6 p.m. The light turned green and the deputy started to turn, but shot across the road, up an embankment and hit a fence.

"I opened up his car door," Huston said. "It looked like he was having an epileptic seizure. I tried to prop up his neck and keep his breathing passages (open).

"Then a nurse came and she said he was in cardiac arrest and turning blue," he said. "I started chest compression and she gave him mouth-to-mouth."

Police identified the nurse as Barb Gannon, who works at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

Another man, Richard Pratt, called 911 while two other nurses came to help, Barnett said. They were identified as Helen Mcaninch, who also works at Children's, and Sharon Brenner of Colerain Township, who works at Jewish.

None could be reached for comment.

Cpl. Knapp has been a deputy since 1992 and was promoted to corporal in 1999. He is divorced with no children, Barnett said.

Huston, who said he took a CPR course several years ago, simply followed Gannon's lead.

"If she told me to do something, I was going to do it," he said. "I just acted at the time. I didn't do anything else any differently than he would have done for me if the circumstances had been reversed. I'm just happy that he's still with us."

E-mail daveck@fuse.net