John Travolta and Kelly Preston held their son’s hand and frantically begged him to live while they rode with him in an ambulance, it was revealed yesterday as the actor spoke out for the first time about the couple’s heartache.
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“Jett, come on, Jett, come on, come around!” Travolta begged Friday morning as he held the 16-year-old’s limp hand en route to a hospital in the Bahamas, recalled EMT crew chief Marcus Garvey.
A weeping Preston then grabbed her son’s hand, urging him, “Come on baby, come on, Jett!” according to an interview Garvey gave Radaronline.com.
Just moments earlier, Travolta had rushed to give “the kiss of life” to his son at their vacation townhouse after hearing screams from the teen’s attendant, Jeff Kathrein, and feeling a “slight pulse” in the dying boy, according to the star’s lawyer, Michael McDermott. “I tried the kiss of life for about 20 minutes. I wouldn’t give up. Jeff gave Jett CPR,” Travolta said, according to McDermott.
“I did everything I could to keep Jett alive. The paramedics took over from me when they arrived.”
It was too late: Jett was pronounced dead at Rand Memorial Hospital.
“Jett was the most wonderful son that two parents could ever ask for, and lit up the lives of everyone he encountered,” a grieving Travolta wrote yesterday on his Web site. “We are heartbroken that our time with him was so brief.”
The seizure-prone youth was found by Kathrein, one of his two attendants, Friday morning in the bathroom of the townhouse on Grand Bahamas Island, where he had collapsed and hit his head on a bathtub.
Garvey told Radaronline.com that when his crew got there, they saw Jett in a hallway, where a doctor who had been summoned was performing CPR.
Jett had a bump on his forehead, and was bleeding slightly from his nose and mouth, “which you’d see from someone having an epileptic fit, probably biting the tongue,” Garvey said.
“At the time, he was unconscious, and no respirator or pulse or anything at that time,” the EMT said.
Travolta, 52, and actress Preston, 46, were there and were “like any other parents, just concerned . . . They were asking all the normal questions you would ask.”
“Are you getting him back? Is he coming back?” the worried Preston asked.
When Jett was loaded into the ambulance, Garvey told Travolta and Preston to ride in a trailing vehicle, but they refused.
“They wanted to be with their son,” Garvey said.
Lawyers for the Travoltas yesterday said the couple years ago put Jett on the strong anti-seizure medication Depakote to fight his “frequent” grand mal episodes, which he was suffering once every four days, on average.
“Each seizure was like a death,” with Jett losing consciousness and convulsing, McDermott and fellow attorney Michael Ossi told the Web site TMZ.com.
They said that when Jett began taking Depakote, the frequency of his seizures was cut dramatically – to about once every three weeks. But after several years, the Travoltas discontinued Depakote after his seizures increased to about once per week, and after they consulted doctors.
It is not known if the Travoltas ever subsequently placed Jett on other types of anti-seizure medication.
The Travoltas have said Jett required round-the-clock monitoring because he had Kawasaki syndrome, which leads to inflamed blood vessels in young children. The couple, who are high-profile members of the Church of Scientology, have repeatedly denied Jett was autistic.
Autistic people have a higher-than-average incidence of epilepsy, which causes seizures.
Also yesterday, McDermott said Jett had been “spectacularly supervised” before he collapsed in the bathroom.
“The police left the impression that the boy was unsupervised. No. There were two nannies with him for the entire evening,” McDermott said.
An autopsy on Jett is scheduled for today in the Bahamas.