Four girls raise funds to buy a life-saving defibrillator for Bolton community

Chloe and Amelia Hindle and Lucy and Ruby Walsh were watching when they saw footballer Christian Eriksen collapse on the pitch during the Euros after suffering a cardiac arrest.

The four girls decided they wanted to give Tonge Fold access to a defibrillator after they researched and found many places don’t have one.

Stacey Taylor, the girls teacher at Taylor’s Theatre Academy, said she believes the football sparked an interest in the girls to fundraise.

She said: “The girls were watching the football with their families when they saw Eriksen collapse. It sparked an interest in them to raise money and get a defibrillator for the local community.

“They researched and found that defibrillators are not as accessible as they should be, so they contacted the Oliver King Foundation to see how they could help and then went on a sponsored walk and raised enough money to buy the academy a defibrillator.”

The defibrillator is now outside the academy for easy access, and some local residents and families were trained this week on how to correctly use a defibrillator and conduct CPR.

Stacey said she and other members of the academy are really proud of the girls.

She said: “We are so proud of the girls, they did a lot of walking to raise funds to buy a defibrillator and we are just so proud of them. They smashed it and got all the walking and fundraising done in one week.

The Oliver King Foundation was created when Mark King’s son Oliver suffered a sudden cardiac arrest whilst swimming due to a condition known as sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS).

This condition kills 12 young people under the age of 35 every single week in the UK. Sadly there was no lifesaving defibrillator on hand, and for every minute that passed Oliver's chances of survival dropped significantly.

In his memory, the foundation’s work has saved more than 40 lives, placing over 4,500 lifesaving defibrillators across the UK.