https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=793982742266079
By Brendan Rascius
The Charlotte Observer
STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. — A police officer rushed to help save a 2-year-old boy who almost drowned in a pool in a dramatic episode that was captured on the officer’s body camera.
The incident occurred at a home in Sterling Heights, a suburb of Detroit, according to a July 17 news release from police.
“There was a party going on, so there were people in the backyard,” a spokesman for the Sterling Heights Police Department told McClatchy News.
“The parents said they went to the front of the house for a moment to do something and came back and realized that the child was in the pool,” the spokesman said.
Upon seeing the toddler motionless and seemingly “lifeless” at the bottom of the pool, the child’s father immediately jumped in and pulled him to the surface. He and the child’s mother then began administering CPR, police said.
After receiving chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for about one minute, the boy spat up water and “began gasping for breaths,” police said.
Around that time, an officer sprinted onto the scene — following a 911 call — and grabbed ahold of the boy, who was fighting to breathe.
The officer flipped the boy onto his stomach and repeatedly struck his back to help clear his airway, video shows.
The toddler was then rushed to a nearby hospital to receive additional medical attention.
The boy was later released and is “back to his happy self,” police said, adding that the response to the harrowing incident was an “extraordinary team effort, and everyone involved should be commended!”
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