SWAT officer saves an unresponsive baby by performing CPR
By Sharif Paget and Susannah Cullinane, CNN
An Atlanta police officer saved an unresponsive 4-month-old baby after performing CPR on him Friday, the department said.
The fortuitous encounter happened around noon when SWAT officer Robert Oden saw a vehicle driving down the street with its hazards on and the car horn “frantically blowing,” the Atlanta Police Department said in a statement. Oden, who was patrolling the area, decided to follow the car in the event of an emergency.
After the vehicle parked at a fire station the occupants got out and ran over to Oden for help, the statement said.
Footage from Oden’s body camera — released by APD — shows the life-saving moments.
At the start of the video, a frantic woman is seen running over to Oden with a baby in her arms. “He’s not responding,” she’s heard saying, later exclaiming: “Oh my God.”
Oden quickly notifies radio dispatch of the emergency and starts performing CPR on the infant, who is placed on the grass outside the fire station. Oden was not able to detect the baby’s pulse, according to the APD statement.
In the footage, Oden is seen alternating between using his fingers and thumb for the chest compressions and leaning in several times to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the baby.
Oden tells one of the bystanders to knock on the door of the fire station to see if anybody is inside.
He performs CPR on the infant for about a minute and half before an emergency worker arrives to take the infant.
By the time the EMS workers arrived, Oden had successfully gained a pulse from the infant whose “legs began to move,” the department said.
“Grady EMS took custody of the child and rushed him to the hospital for further treatment,” it added.
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