UPDATE: Woman who collapsed in cinema loses fight for life

A 65-year-old woman who suffered a cardiac arrest at Stratford's Everyman Cinema last week, has since died.

Two quick-thinking cinema-goers came to the aid of the woman, who had collapsed in her chair and stopped breathing during a screening of Wonder Woman in the new Bell Court venue last Thursday.

Laura Hall, who is a neonatal nurse, was 15 minutes into the film when she heard a thump on the floor and realised that a woman had collapsed between the cinema seats just after 6pm.

“I was first on the scene. My instincts kicked in and I started CPR as the woman was not breathing and had no pulse,” Laura said.

Meanwhile the woman’s husband went into the bar area of the cinema to raise the alarm and in a state of shock.

His cries for help were answered by Gill Cleeve, a first aid instructor who runs Brookvale First Aid Training, and who had been having a coffee at the bar. She immediately dashed to the cardiac arrest patient.

The Everyman Cinema duty manager, Josie Englishby, rang the emergency services, who advised to get the nearest defibrillator from outside Loxley’s Restaurant on Sheep Street. A member of staff did so.

Paramedics were on the scene within six minutes and took over the CPR duties using a defibrillator.

The woman had a pulse and was breathing by herself again by the time she was taken from the cinema by ambulance to Warwick Hospital.

West Midlands Ambulance Service confirmed that it received a call at 6.12 pm and that a patient at the cinema was unconscious and had gone into cardiac arrest. CPR was being administered at the scene and the ambulance crew then took over and the woman’s heart was successfully re-started. The patient, who has not yet been named, was then taken to Warwick Hospital but it was confirmed today, Monday, that she had sadly died.