Palatine Boy, 4, 'Fighting For Life' After Lake Michigan Rescue

LAKESIDE, MI — A 4-year-old Palatine boy is still in critical condition after he was found floating and unresponsive last week in Lake Michigan along the southwestern Michigan shoreline. Matthew Ramirez was pulled from the water by fast-acting bystanders Tuesday at a beach at Warren Dunes State Park, and he was taken to Lakeland Medical Center in St. Joseph before being flown to Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, the Harbor Country News reports. In a statement Friday, the Berrien County Sheriff's Department says Matthew is "fighting for his life," the report added.

According to the sheriff's department, the incident happened after 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 1, when Mat­thew was at the park's beach with several family members, the report stated. The boy had been playing in the water with other children when family members, believing Matthew was on the shore, returned to the beach area, the report added. (Get Patch real-time email alerts for the latest Palatine news. And iPhone users: Check out Patch's new app.)

Matthew, however, had stayed in the water, but no one realized the boy was in trouble until another child on a boogie board went out to investigate what he thought was a log floating in the lake, Megan Dodson, a bystander who helped rescue the boy, told Harbor Country News. The child yelled to shore that it was a boy in the water, and Matthew's grandmother waded out to him, pulled his face out of the water and passed him to Dodson, who carried him up to the beach.

Once on land, bystanders performed CPR on Matthew until emergency crews arrived, the report stated. But Deanna Marie Henle — a witness from Plano, Illinois, whose cousin and brother, a retired firefighter, helped with the rescue effort — told the News that the boy didn't regain consciousness.

"I just know they weren’t able to re­suscitate him at that time. He had no pulse," she said, adding that she tried to console Matthew's sister, who allegedly was in charge of watching her younger brother.

"I heard a lot of people pass­ing judgment, and I tried to stop that," Henle told the News.

Warren Dunes has three miles of shoreline along Lake Michigan, and the beach was under a green flag, meaning no wave activity, the day of the incident, the report stated. The beach at the state park, however, does not have lifeguards the report added.

More via Harbor Country News

Warren Dunes State Park (Photo via State of Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

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