I gave my neighbor CPR after she drowned in her pool and now she’s suing me for sexual assault.

A Hero’s Reward Turns Into a Nightmare

I gave my neighbor CPR after she drowned in her pool and now she’s suing me for sexual assault. The process server handed me the lawsuit at 6:15 on a Thursday evening while I was grilling chicken in my backyard.

“Are you Colin Brennan?” he asked

And when I nodded, he pushed a thick manila envelope into my hands.

“You’ve been served.”

I stood there holding the envelope, confused, while my dinner burned on the grill behind me. I opened it to find legal documents claiming I’d sexually assaulted my neighbor Vanessa Hartley during a medical emergency three weeks ago.

The claim demanded $3.2 million in damages for assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violation of her bodily autonomy. I read the first page twice, my hands starting to shake, unable to process what I was seeing.

Three weeks ago, I’d pulled Vanessa from her pool after finding her floating face down, unconscious. I’d performed CPR for eight minutes until paramedics arrived. She’d been clinically dead when I started compressions.

The EMTs told me I’d saved her life; now she was claiming I’d sexually assaulted her while doing it. The lawsuit stated I’d inappropriately touched her breasts and chest area without consent and took advantage of her unconscious state to commit acts of sexual violence under the guise of medical assistance.

I felt my stomach turn as I read the accusations. I’d placed my hands on her sternum to perform chest compressions exactly as I’d been trained in my CPR certification class.

Standard medical procedure, life-saving intervention, and somehow that had become sexual assault in her mind, or in the mind of whatever lawyer had convinced her to file this. I called my wife immediately. Rebecca answered on the second ring, and I could hear our kids arguing in the background about whose turn it was to set the table.

“Becca, something happened. I just got served with a lawsuit.”

Her voice shifted instantly from distracted to focused.

“What kind of lawsuit?”

I told her about the sexual assault claim, about Vanessa, and about the CPR. There was a long silence on the other end.

When she finally spoke, her voice was tight with controlled anger.

“That’s insane. You saved her life. I was there that day. I saw you pull her out of the pool. You were trying to help her.”

I told her I knew that, but apparently Vanessa saw it differently now. Rebecca said she was coming home immediately.

She worked as a nurse at County General, and her shift didn’t end for another two hours, but she’d find coverage. I needed her, and she was coming. I hung up and looked at the lawsuit again, reading through the detailed accusations.

They claimed I’d lingered during chest compressions, that my hand placement was suspiciously low near the breast tissue, and that I’d failed to properly drape her body or protect her modesty. They even claimed that I’d continued CPR longer than necessary.

Every single accusation was a distortion of what actually happened. I’d been fighting to restart her heart. There was no lingering, no inappropriate touching, no violation, just desperate, frantic attempts to keep blood flowing to her brain until help arrived.

I’d known Vanessa for four years, ever since she and her husband Gregory bought the house next door. We weren’t close friends, but we were friendly neighbors.

We’d wave when getting mail, chat occasionally about lawn care or local restaurants, and invite each other to summer barbecues. Gregory traveled constantly for work in commercial real estate.

Vanessa worked from home doing graphic design. They seemed like a normal couple in their late 30s with no kids and enough money to maintain a nice house with a pool.

The Fateful Afternoon at the Pool

That afternoon, three weeks ago, I’d been in my garage organizing tools when I heard a splash and then nothing. No laughter, no continued swimming sounds, just silence. Something felt wrong.

I’d walked around the side of my house and looked over the fence into Vanessa’s backyard. She was floating face down in the deep end of her pool, completely motionless.

Her arms were spread out and her dark hair was fanned around her head in the water. I didn’t think; I just jumped the fence, ran to the pool, and dove in fully clothed.

The water was cold and clear. I grabbed Vanessa around the torso and pulled her to the shallow end, dragging her up the steps and onto the concrete deck.

She wasn’t breathing. Her lips were blue and her skin had a grayish tint. I rolled her onto her back, tilted her head to open her airway, checked for breathing again, and started chest compressions when I confirmed she had no pulse.

I’d taken a CPR class two years earlier when I became a youth soccer coach. The instructor had drilled into us the importance of hard, fast compressions at the center of the chest. Two inches deep, 100 compressions per minute, and don’t stop until help arrives or the person starts breathing.

I placed the heel of my hand on Vanessa’s sternum, exactly where I’d been taught, and started pushing. Her chest compressed under my hands with each thrust. I counted out loud to keep rhythm.

After 30 compressions, I gave two rescue breaths, pinching her nose and sealing my mouth over hers to force air into her lungs. Then back to compressions.

My arms burned, and sweat dripped into my eyes, but I kept going. Rebecca had heard me shout and came running from our house. She called 911 while I continued CPR.

The operator told her to keep me going, that paramedics were seven minutes out. Those seven minutes felt like hours.

I performed four complete cycles of compressions and breaths before Vanessa suddenly coughed and water sprayed from her mouth. She started breathing on her own, shallow and ragged, but breathing.

I rolled her onto her side in the recovery position, and she vomited pool water onto the concrete. The paramedics arrived three minutes later and took over, loading Vanessa onto a stretcher and rushing her to the hospital.

Rebecca and I stood in Vanessa’s backyard, soaking wet and shaking with adrenaline, watching the ambulance drive away. Gregory had been in Dallas on business.

Rebecca called him from the contact information Vanessa had given us months earlier for emergencies. He’d caught the next flight home and arrived at the hospital that evening.

Two days later, after Vanessa was released, Gregory came to our house with a bottle of expensive wine and tears in his eyes. He’d thanked me profusely, saying the doctors told him Vanessa would have died without immediate CPR.

He said that I’d given her brain just enough oxygen to prevent permanent damage. He’d hugged me, called me a hero, and said he’d never be able to repay what I’d done.

That had been three weeks ago. Now I was holding a lawsuit claiming I’d sexually assaulted his wife.

A Legal Battle for Reputation and Career

Rebecca arrived home 20 minutes after my call. She read through the lawsuit at our kitchen table while I paced. Our kids, Emma and Lucas, were upstairs doing homework, oblivious to the crisis unfolding.

Rebecca’s face grew darker with each page.

“This is obscene,” she finally said.

“Every accusation here is a complete misrepresentation of CPR procedure. You did everything correctly. I watched you. I’m a nurse. I would have stopped you if you were doing something wrong.”

She looked up at me.

“We need a lawyer immediately. This is going to get ugly.”

I told her I’d already looked up attorneys online. I had three names of lawyers who specialize in defending against false accusations.

Rebecca nodded.

“Call them first thing tomorrow. Tonight, we document everything we remember about that day.”

We spent the next two hours writing down every detail we could recall. The time I’d heard the splash was approximately 3:45 in the afternoon. We noted the position of Vanessa’s body in the pool and how long I’d performed CPR before she started breathing, which was roughly eight minutes based on Rebecca’s call timestamp to 911.