9-Year-Old Jace Wiggins.Photo:WMAR
WMAR
“We were just having fun in the music room listening to music,” Wiggins told the news outlet. “She went to go have a drink of water and next minute she was chewing on a cap and drinking water and it must have went down.”
Wiggins said the choking classmate had been “gasping for air” as she tried to ask for help. He used quick thinking as he carried out the Heimlich maneuver on the pupil — and added that it took three times before the cap was removed.
“When she was gasping for air and she was trying to get out what she was saying, she was trying to say help but we couldn’t understand it but I kind of heard it,” Wiggins recalled.
“I was kind of scared, but I just got behind her and did the Heimlich maneuver.”
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Wiggins learned the life-saving move at age 7 from his mom Charlie Gilliam, who is a certified instructor. She also taught her son how to perform CPR, as she toldWMAR 2 Newsit’s “important everyone knows” how to give first aid help at any age.
“Cardiac arrest is something that doesn’t have a face, it doesn’t have an age limit so I think that it’s very important and imperative to have everyone around you just know,” Gilliam said.
Speaking on her son’s heroic turn, the proud mom added, “The school called and said your son saved someone’s life and when he called I think that his adrenaline was rushing and I’m like what do you mean you did all of this and he said ‘I just did it.’ "
source: people.com
