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KY Air Guardsmen save drowning baby
Three Air Guardsmen assigned to Kentucky Air National Guard’s 123rd Special Tactics Squadron intervened to provide life saving aid on an infant who had stopped breathing after drowning.
Three Air Guardsmen assigned to Kentucky Air National Guard’s 123rd Special Tactics Squadron intervened to provide life saving aid on an infant who had stopped breathing after drowning.
The three men and their team had just completed an unrelated training evolution at the aquatic center when a combat controller with the squadron, Master Sgt. Devin Butcher, noticed a distressed civilian.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Three airmen from the Kentucky Air National Guard's 123rd Special Tactics Squadron saved the life of a drowning infant. The airmen worked together to save the baby. <a href="https://t.co/pSJeSEtJBI">https://t.co/pSJeSEtJBI</a></p>— Woods and Woods, LLC, The Veteran's Firm (@TheVeteransFirm) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheVeteransFirm/status/1513644058287255555?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 11, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Butcher said, “I’d seen him [a civilian swim instructor] there multiple times before, but this time he had a strange look on his face — an ‘I need help’ look on his face. Clearly, he was someone who was in shock.” Butcher continued, “Then I observed an infant in his hands that was blue, with mucus coming from the nose and mouth, which is what’s apparent for a drowning victim.”
Master Sgt. Butcher, after securing the infant and determining that it was not breathing, passed it on to Tech Sergeant and pararescuman, Ryan Penne. The two of Air Guardsmen then began to administer CPR.
Penne said, “I didn’t know necessarily what was going on. I just had a baby put in my arms that was unresponsive and blue and cold. So, I started going through the medical procedures to try to revive him.”
The team’s response seemed choreographed:
“After a couple minutes, the baby started slowly coming back to life, the color started coming back and the baby was starting to be able to breathe on his own. But we put oxygen over his nose and mouth, just to help him facilitate that, and then wrapped him up in the hypothermia blankets to keep the baby warm. It was definitely a team and joint effort. There was absolutely no one person. It was ‘right place, right time.’ I mean, if it would’ve been three minutes before or three minutes after us walking out, I don’t know what the situation would’ve been like.” – Master Sergeant Butcher
Master Sergeant Butcher said that how the would-be tragedy concluded was both a “blessing and a miracle.”
