Adam Chełstowski died Monday afternoon although attending a meeting of the Polish Photographers Association. The news of his passing was shared by colleagues in the industry. Chełstowski had a long-standing collaboration with the Polish Press Agency Forum.
Renowned Photographer Dies Suddenly
Details surrounding the death of Adam Chełstowski were shared on social media by photographer and agency owner Wojciech Łaski. According to Łaski, Chełstowski suddenly felt unwell and collapsed. An ambulance was immediately called, and a search for a defibrillator began.
“The well-known, 50-year-old photojournalist suddenly collapsed to the ground; there were about three dozen photojournalists, people who routinely document other people’s dramas, but this time we were kneeling on the pavement, performing CPR and frantically searching for a defibrillator that we couldn’t uncover in the most representative place in the capital; minutes passed mercilessly, our colleague’s face turned blue, hands weakened with effort, the ambulance arrived only after several dozen minutes, and for a stopped heart, that was an eternity,” Łaski wrote.
He added that his colleague “died 100 meters from the Castle, in a place full of tourists and cameras, where there was no device that could give him a real chance.”
Controversy Surrounds Social Media Post
Łaski later posted a second message addressing comments that the ambulance wait time was actually shorter than he initially reported.
“I am being attacked for writing that we waited about half an hour for the ambulance. That was my perception of time at the moment – in huge emotions and stress, every minute feels unimaginably long. If the actual arrival time was shorter, I accept that and have no problem clarifying that information after a thorough check,” he wrote, stating that he does not blame the medical rescuers for the tragedy and has great respect for their work.
“My post was about something else – the lack of a publicly available AED defibrillator in such a busy place as Castle Square. In the event of sudden cardiac arrest, the first few minutes are crucial,” he noted.
Ambulance Arrived in Under Eight Minutes
tvn24.pl contacted the Masovian Voivodeship Office, which oversees the medical dispatch center, to inquire about the ambulance response. Spokeswoman Luiza Jurgiel-Żyła confirmed that the ambulance arrived on the scene in under eight minutes.
– Dispatchers immediately dispatched a medical rescue team to the scene after receiving the report – she indicated. According to her, the report was received at 5:17 PM, and the medical rescue team arrived at the injured person at 5:25 PM.
According to a map of AED devices in Warsaw provided by the City of Warsaw, there are several defibrillators near Castle Square, including at the Royal Castle complex. However, access to them is limited to the museum’s opening hours for visitors. The Castle is similarly closed on Mondays.
Other defibrillators are located at the Warsaw Museum on Old Town Market Square and at the following addresses: Castle Square 2, Senatorska 11, Bugaj 4 (none of which are available 24/7).
Source: tvn24.pl, Facebook
