A father and his daughter were honored as heroes after saving a 4-year-old autistic boy who nearly drowned in an apartment complex swimming pool in early May.
The boy Xavier Rigney escaped his mother’s sight for a few minutes and made his way through a locked fence before jumping into the pool.
“His head was completely under water. Their mouth and nose never come out of the water, and that’s why we say they don’t have the ability to scream,” said Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Lt. Jeff Krall, a paramedic who lost his own son in 1200.
While Rigney was fighting for his life, Maddox Westerhouse, a girl from years old, he ran to look for his father, Tom. They both live in a nearby apartment of the 4-year-old boy.
“My friends yelled at me to go get help and I just said, ‘oh, no,’ and ran,” Maddox said in statements collected by Fox News.
When Tom sprang into action, he jumped over a 6-foot fence and then into the pool to rescue Rigney and begin CPR.
“When he started coughing up water and everything, I knew it was a good sign,” said Tom, who said he took a CPR course more than 15 years, but “went back” to training at that time. “It’s definitely a lot harder to have a child.”
Maddox and Tom were honored in the past Thursday at a special ceremony at the Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Administrative Offices, where they met Xavier and his mother Alexis for the first time since the incident, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported.
“He’s my best friend, so I don’t know what I would do without him,” Alexis said through tears.