Who is Victoria Valentino? Bill Cosby accuser and ex-playboy model keeps neighbor alive after he's shot
Former Playboy model, who also alleged that comedian Bill Cosby drugged and raped her, heroically saved her neighbor's life after he was shot. The incident happened on Sunday, December 20, when a man was gunned down in Southern California. After hearing the sound of the gun, Valentino first thought someone was bursting firecrackers outside, but she soon discovered that it was actually the sound of a bullet. She immediately rushed to the scene to find a man lying on the ground. The Sun reported that after realizing the person was going into shock due to the attack, Valentino, who earlier worked as a nurse at a hospice and was Playmate for a month in 1963, lifted his legs into the air so that blood continued to flow to his heart and brain.
The Cosby accuser also helped treat the victim’s wound until the paramedics reached the address. “He was flat on his back with a lot of blood oozing out of his clothes and I lifted up his legs to try to, you know, shove the blood to his heart and brain until the paramedics could get here and take over,” Valentino told ABC 7. On Facebook, Valentino said her neighbor was shot five times, adding she was 'emotionally drained' by the experience and deflected when friends called her a hero. It has been said that the man is receiving treatment at a hospital and is doing fine.
She also wrote about the technique she used to keep her neighbor alive - one she used many times over the years when a person was going into shock.
“…It’s called Trendelenberg,” she wrote. “I’ve had to use it many times over the years- 3 times on different cross country flights! When the blood pressure drops. Head flat down and feet up. Blood pressure too high. Sit upright with feet in pan of hot water. Vasolldilation in the periphery & give an aspirin. Sometimes if you have it lemon juice in water (also good for high blood sugar) til you can stabilize them with higher levels of care," she wrote.
Who is Victoria Valentino?
Valentino was raised in Connecticut but soon shifted to California. There she worked with a folk group and exchanged marital vows with a Black Cuban man - also an aspiring photographer - with whom she had a son, Tony. Her husband used to take pictures of her, which he sent to Playboy. And in September 1963, Valentino became the Playmate of the Month. The young Valentino was also responsible for helping in the opening of Playboy Club on the Sunset Strip in 1964. But five years later, she faced an unfortunate incident as her child died in a swimming pool accident. “I was dead inside – like someone had taken a dull knife and gutted me,” she told The Guardian earlier. Three months after the tragedy, Valentino was suggested by a friend to meet Cosby, with the hope that he might help her in getting a role on his show, ‘I Spy’. But the meeting turned out to be a nightmare for her and then aspiring actress Meg Foster, whom the convicted sex offender red pills. “He said, ‘It’ll make you feel better. It’ll make all of us feel better.’ That was my clue that I was being a wet blanket so I took the pill,” she said as reported by The Guardian.
The red pills left the two women lethargic and then Cosby took them to an apartment in Hollywood Hills. “He was just standing over her [Foster] like a vulture. I saw the bulge in his pants. I reached out my hands. I couldn’t articulate anything,” Valentino recalled before saying, “At first he ignored me. And then suddenly he got up with this really pissed off look on his face and walked over to me. His zipper was undone. He grabbed my head. He orally raped me and then turned me around and vaginally raped me. When he finished, he walked out.” “After that I became very suicidal. I felt like nothing. I was very self-destructive. I was a lost soul,” she added. At Cosby’s sentencing hearing in 2018, Valentino said: “this is a great day for women and a great day for rape survivors."