'I was dead for a few minutes': Couple's date night took a sudden dramatic turn

Sarah Knight had been enjoying a date night with her husband Patrick when her heart stopped beating.

The couple were out watching the latest Avatar film at a cinema in Didsbury when the mum-of-two suddenly slumped over in her chair.

Thinking she may have been suffering a seizure, Patrick attempted to wake her. But when the 33-year-old failed to respond, it quickly became clear something was seriously wrong.

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One cinemagoer phoned for an ambulance and was asked to check whether Sarah was breathing. To her horror, she wasn’t. Sarah had no pulse.

The stranger and a security guard took turns performing CPR while waiting for ambulance crews to arrive. Another cinemagoer ran to retrieve a nearby defibrillator while a junior doctor, who was in the cinema lobby at the time, gave Sarah mouth to mouth.

Paramedics arrived at the scene within minutes and managed to resuscitate Sarah with five defibrillator shocks.

“It’s just scary to think about what could have happened,” Sarah, who lives in Handforth, told the Manchester Evening News. “I have two small children and we’ve only just started our lives in Cheshire. We moved up from London a few years ago and we’ve only just bought a house.

“It could have happened anywhere; I could have been walking the dogs in the woods, I could have been pregnant, there are all sorts of times where it could have happened.

“It’s very strange that we decided to go to the cinema that day. I feel slightly incredulous that we were so lucky to be in the position we were in.”

It was later determined that Sarah had suffered a cardiac arrest.

Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops pumping. If this