Students, teachers and a school resource officer had a frightening lunch Tuesday when an 11-year-old boy began to choke on the cap of a water bottle.
Thanks to quick action by the child’s peers and the officer’s determination, the story has a happy ending.
Officer Duane Smith told Channel 2 Action News that he had just finished eating at Red Top Middle School in Bartow County when a commotion began. Students told a teacher that sixth grader Ethan Hamrick had swallowed a bottle cap and needed help.
“I didn’t think about the outcome,” Smith said. “I just thought about what I was gonna do, and I wasn’t gonna stop until I was done.”
Credit: Channel 2 Action News
Credit: Channel 2 Action News
Rudra Parmar, another sixth grade student, told Channel 2 he was sitting next to Hamrick when the incident happened. He said his friend’s face started to turn blue.
“He was like, ‘Go grab the teachers,’ like in a stuttering voice,” Parmar told the news station.
Smith quickly leaped into action, but dislodging the bottle cap from the boy’s throat wasn’t an easy process. He had performed 13 thrusts of the Heimlich maneuver, and the cap still wasn’t free.
“He’s a lot shorter than I am, and I was taking him through it,” Smith told Channel 2. “I said, ‘Hang on, buddy. Hang on, buddy.’”
On the 14th thrust, the cap dislodged and Hamrick could breathe normally again.
The child went to the hospital that day and was able to return to school Thursday, the news station reported. He wasn’t able to be interviewed, but he’s doing OK aside from a little soreness.
“I figured he would be (sore) because I was squeezing on him really hard,” Smith said.
The officer said this is a textbook example of CPR saving lives. He added that divine intervention might have played a factor since he was helping a patrol at a nearby high school earlier that day.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be back on this campus yet, but something told me to head on back to Red Top,” he told Channel 2. “I was put at the right place at the right time by the powers above. I believe that.”
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