Rival Teen Basketball Players Now ‘Brothers for Life’ After One Saves the Other from Cardiac Arrest at Game (Exclusive)

On Thursday, Jan. 9, Chocktaw, Olka. high school senior Magnus Miller was playing in a tournament basketball game when a player on the opposing team went into cardiac arrest.

It was three minutes into the game, against a team Miller had never gone up against. “We’re in there playing pretty hard,” Miller, 18, recalls to PEOPLE.

A boy on the opposing team, 16-year-old sophomore Randall “Randy” Vitales, scored a layup – as Miller went to retrieve the ball, he heard his coach yelling, “He’s out, he’s out.”

Miller turned and saw Vitales passed out on the court at the free-throw line. “From then, it was just kind of panic,” Miller says, recalling watching as the boy started convulsing.

“I have a friend that has dealt with seizures in the past, he has a medical condition and it’s happened on the court before,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Oh, I bet the medical staff, and I bet these teammates and coaches know what’s going on and what’s happening.’ ”

The coaches called the players over to the bench. When they broke the huddle, Miller saw the boy was still on the ground – and from what he could tell, it didn’t look like it was something his teammates and coaches dealt with regularly. “You can tell that it’s not something that happens usually,” he says.

Miller, a senior at Life Christian Academy, plans to attend the University of Oklahoma and study health and exercise science. “I want to be able to help athletes,” he says of his academic interests.

On top of that, the intrepid student has spent the last two summers working as a lifeguard.

“I start watching, trying to just be as vigilant as I can, really assess the situation because it’s not getting better, is what I saw,” he says.

Miller went to the half-court and spoke to the referee. “Me and him are both just realizing it doesn’t really look right, the way people are frantic and just they’re curious of what’s happening too,” he says. “Then he started agonal breathing and that was when I decided to step in — because at that point, that’s real cardiac arrest and the body’s not really breathing, it’s just trying to do what it can to survive. And so that’s when I knew I had to get in there.”

Miller rushed to the teen’s side, checked his pulse and monitored his breathing.

“He has no pulse and he’s not breathing at all,” Miller remembers, which spurred him to calmly take control of the situation.

He tried to rip the boy’s Jersey open so a defibrillator could be used – but the jersey was too thick, which led him to retrieve scissors and try to cut it.

Next, he grabbed the school’s defibrillator – he knew that had to be his first step, he says, “because that’ll elevate his chances of living.”

He then explained to a woman at the scene how to place the defibrillator on the boy’s body.

“I’m like, ‘Okay, you got to put this on his chest and then his right hip, upper hip.’ And she did it perfectly. Thank God it was a great and new AED,” he says.

Next, since the boy had no pulse and wasn’t breathing – he knew they had to start CPR.

“I was like, ‘We got to go straight into CPR and we’re not going to stop until EMS arrives or an ambulance arrives,’ ” he says.

Miller positioned himself at the teen’s head, he held the boy’s head tilted back so his airway was open, which he notes was done “so if he ever started breathing again, he could and his tongue wouldn’t be blocking his airway.”

Miller asked two adult males to do the chest compressions. “Because he is a bigger guy, and I wanted them to be able to get deep into the chest enough to where the compressions would actually do something,” he says.

Miller cradled the boy’s head, called out the compressions and asked two other people to alternately administer rescue breaths so they wouldn’t get tired.

“Just like you see in movies with the mouth-to-mouth breaths,” he says. “It’s a very intense situation and it can get frantic in a split second. I was trying to keep people calm. I’ve been through those scenarios thousands of times, and that training really prepares you.”

They worked for about 30 minutes until EMS arrived, and the AED was shocked just once.

“I think that AED really came in and just started his heart up, found that rhythm and kept him alive,” Miller says. “But we weren’t going to stop CPR just in case. I was just taught in my training that you never stop.”

Thankfully, the CPR worked. “We finally found a faint pulse,” he remembers.

Guthrie Fire Chief Dane Lausen, who made it to the scene with his deputy chief minutes after the ambulance arrived, tells PEOPLE that it was snowing and the roads were slick that day. He and Miller helped load the teen into the ambulance, and the boy was rushed to OU Children’s Hospital, about an hour from where the game was.

“He’s a really awesome kid,” Lausen says of Miller. “Those life-saving measures, definitely, no doubt in my mind saved his life that day.”

While Miller has performed water rescues during his lifeguard duties, he’s never performed CPR on a live person in distress before, despite having received formal training on how to do so.

Miller and his mother visited Vitalis in the hospital on Tuesday, Jan. 14.

“It was pretty emotional seeing him. I mean, I couldn’t be happier for him and his family just to know that he’s healthy and he is going to be back at it,” he shares of the reunion.

“I told him, ‘I love you. I’m here for you always.’ If he needs anything, I’m here,” Miller continues, adding that he went back to the hospital with his coach to visit the very next day and was able to meet Vitales’ mother in the process.

“I’ve created a special bond with his mom too. She was very emotional. And there’s not much words you can say. It’s a very emotional and spiritual thing,” Miller says. “Those feelings really connect when you just look each other in the eyes and you just know it’s a brotherhood that just kind of created from this situation. So that was pretty intense.”

Miller recalls telling Vitales, “I wasn’t going to let you die on that court.”

“And I meant it — I wasn’t,” Miller shares. “No matter who it was on that court, parent, friend, teammate, enemy, opponent, I mean, I was going to do all I could to not let them die on that court because I think it was a calling for me that day to just keep him alive.”

He and Vitales, who had never met before the incident, now talk, text and chat on social media every day, according to Miller. (Through the Miller family, the Vitales family declined to comment for the story).

“He knows that if he needs anything or he has any questions, just reach out and I’m here for him,” Miller says.

The student-athlete has now become friends with almost every player on the Dover team too. “I never met any of them before, but now they’re brothers for life,” he reveals.

As a result of his valiant efforts, Miller was presented with a “Saved a Life Today” plaque at a charity game held on Jan. 21.

“It’s nice to celebrate and then take advantage of an educational opportunity as well,” Lausen highlights. It’s crucial to have an AED at schools, and he encourages others to get CPR certified.

“This young man’s life was saved just because of the [CPR] training,” he adds.