TORONTO – For Officer Martin Smith, May 14 is a day he says he’ll never forget.
That’s the day the Albuquerque PD officer responded to a 911 call, finding an unresponsive baby being held in the arms of her hysterical mother.
Smith immediately used CPR to resuscitate the young infant, with the touching moment captured entirely by his body camera.
“That’s what makes doing this job good. That’s the good part of it,” Smith told KOAT-7 News in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
According to Albuquerque Police, Smith was dispatched to a home in the Northeast Heights neighbourhood around 1 p.m. on May 14.
When he arrived, he discovered an unresponsive seven-month-old infant, being cradled in the arms of her mother, who was desperately crying for help.
Video taken by Smith’s body camera and posted to YouTube by the Albuquerque PD shows what happens next, as Smith’s training takes over and he immediately beings CPR on the unconscious baby.
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“Anyone who’s had that training would go into autopilot and start responding,” Smith said.
Unlike giving CPR to a full grown adult, when both hands are generally used to deliver chest compressions, Smith used only his index and middle fingers on the young girl’s chest as he begins mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
In the video, we can hear the young girl’s mother, Alyssia Rios, nearly overcome with panic as she describes putting her daughter down for a nap and returning to find her unresponsive.
According to her, the young girl’s eyes had rolled into the back of her head, and she was not breathing.
After a few tense moments of CPR, an incredible turn of events.
“I started rubbing her chest and blowing in her face … and she started coming out of it,” Smith said. “That (woke her).”
The video shows the young girl coming to, held in the arms of the police officer who may very well have saved her life.
“There you go. There she is. She’s good, she’s good,” Smith can be heard comforting the young girl on the tape.
“Hi baby! Hi! How you doing?”
According to the Albuquerque PD facebook page, the young girl was then taken to hospital, where she was diagnosed with a seizure disorder and is now on medication.
For his quick-thinking, Smith has the gratitude of one incredibly thankful mother.
“If it wasn’t for him, who knows what the outcome of the situation could have been,” Rios said.
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