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Friends find and help sick man while out playing Pokemon Go

An antidote to all those stories of Pokemon Go-related mishaps: three friends find an ill man while out playing the game and make sure he gets medical aid.

Leslie Katz Former Culture Editor
Leslie Katz led a team that explored the intersection of tech and culture, plus all manner of awe-inspiring science, from space to AI and archaeology. When she's not smithing words, she's probably playing online word games, tending to her garden or referring to herself in the third person.
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  • Third place film critic, 2021 LA Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards
Leslie Katz
2 min read
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Pokemon Go players never know what they'll find if they look up from their phones.

Josh Miller/CNET

As you probably know by now, all kinds of bad things can happen to you while playing Pokemon Go. You can fall into a pond or crash into a cop car. If you're really distracted (and honestly, who isn't while playing the game?), you might even step on a landmine.

But lest you think the game is merely a personal-health disaster waiting to happen, here's a reminder that good things can result from the augmented-reality game too.

Three friends in the UK encountered a seriously ill man while out hunting for digital monsters, the Newark Advertiser reports, and rather than ignoring him in their quest for a Pikachu, they called for medical assistance and waited with the man until it came.

Pals Luke Huckstep, Gavin Peasgood and Ryan Dale were playing the game in Newark, England, late Wednesday night when they came across a man in his late 50s who had collapsed, the paper reports. They called 999, the equivalent of 911 in the US, and stayed by the man's side until paramedics, and later an ambulance, showed up.

"We have heard stories from America of people finding unusual things but I didn't expect it to be us," the 25-year-old Huckstep told the paper.

Presumably, one such unusual thing is that dead body a Pokemon player reported finding in a Wyoming river just after the game came out.

There's no word yet on the condition of the ailing gentleman found in the Newark park, but here's hoping he can call Pokemon Go a life-saver.

Watch this: What you look like playing Pokemon Go