'He didn't die alone': Man who performed CPR on stabbing attack victim speaks

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Two men were fatally wounded and a third injured on a light-rail train Friday after attempting to intervene as another passenger screamed racial slurs at two young women, according to police. 

When crowds started running away from the scene during the brutal MAX train stabbings on Friday, Michael Kennedy ran toward it.

Kennedy, a former paramedic, was there on the train, one car away. He sprung into action and started helping Rick Best, one of the two victims who ultimately passed away.

"I realized that he wasn't breathing anymore and we were checking for a pulse and couldn't feel one. I started doing chest compressions on him," Kennedy said.

Kennedy said it was unlike anything he'd seen in his life.

"I've seen people getting killed before, I've seen car wrecks. I've seen all that. I have never seen or been prepared for two men getting knifed down in an attack," he said.

Kennedy was riding home when he heard the light-rail operator on the loud speaker. 

"The max operator said, 'If you don't knock it off in the first car, I'm calling the cops,' " he said.

Kennedy wasn't too fazed at first. Then he heard a second warning. Suddenly, the train stopped and people in the first car started running.

"First thing I thought was, 'We're sitting ducks here,'" he said. "You know the Spanish train bombings a few years ago, the London tube bombings. I was like, 'Well we're just kind of stuck here.' "

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Kennedy, who works as a water quality specialist, pushed concerns aside and went running to the first car.

"What I first saw was the bloody tracks and blood flowing out of the door," he said. "Then I saw him. Then on the other side of Tiliasin [Myrddin Namkai Meche] was Ricky [Best]."

The former paramedic knew it was bad. He said both men had their throats slit near the carotid artery. Best appeared to be in worse shape, so Kennedy, inside that train, knelt beside him and worked to clear his airways.

Then he started performing CPR.

"It felt like a really, really long time," Kennedy said. "You count when you do compressions. I counted to 100 many, many times."

Eventually firefighters arrived at the scene, confirming what Kennedy already knew. Rick Best, a veteran and city employee who was attacked for standing up again hate, was gone.

Taliesin Namkai Meche died at the hospital. Micah Fletcher is expected to survive.

Kennedy said he hopes Best's family knows that he didn't die alone.

"He was surrounded by people who were soothing him and caring for him," he said. "He did not die alone."

Jeremy Christian, 35, the suspect in the stabbings, is being held on suspicion of aggravated murder, attempted murder, intimidation and being a felon in possession of a weapon. He was arrested a short time after the Friday attack.