By MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — It was the scariest choking incident David Palumbo had ever seen.

The 88-year-old man had been dining at a Providence, Rhode Island, Italian restaurant in September 2019. Now he was unconscious, with a piece of bread lodged in his windpipe. Precious minutes went by as first responders were unable to help him with CPR or the Heimlich maneuver.

In an ambulance on the way to the hospital, the elderly man’s skin was blue, and firefighters worried he was going to die. Palumbo — a fire department captain — used a scissors-like device called Magill forceps to pull the bread from the man’s throat.

“We get a lot of calls in the city for choking,” many of which are resolved before emergency responders even get there, Palumbo added. “This was by fa

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