Sterling Heights Officer Credited With Helping Save Boy's Life

STERLING HEIGHTS, MI — Sterling Heights Police released body camera footage of an officer who helped to rescue a 2-year-old boy whose father found him lifeless at the bottom of the family’s swimming pool.

The footage, captured from Officer Nathan Sears’ body-worn camera, shows Sears rushing to the edge of the family’s swimming pool, where the boy was lying. The Sterling Heights Police Department said that the family and friends were enjoying the weather when the boy’s father walked to the edge of the pool and saw his son’s body at the bottom.

The department said the father had just been walking with his son minutes before. After seeing his son, the man jumped into the pool and pulled his son from the pool. He began administering CPR. Police arrived after the father had been giving his son breaths and the boy’s mother had been giving him compressions, police said.

"We are all thinking the same thing. Please, God, let this child make it," Sterling Heights Police Department Chief Dale Dwojakowski told ABC 7 in Detroit in an interview this week.

Police said the boy’s face was still blue when Sears arrived and was having difficulty breathing. The footage shows Sears flipping the boy over and beginning to deliver blows to the boy to help clear his airway.

The boy began to spit up water and then began gasping for breath before he started breathing on his own and starting to cry.

"And then the child starts crying, loud cries, which is an awesome sign for full lung capacity. It's a tearjerker, it's emotional, and thank God the child made it. Ten more seconds, 20 more seconds, that may have been too long," Dwojakowski told the Detroit TV station.

The Sterling Heights Fire Department began treating the child while rushing him to the hospital for further medical attention. Police said the boy was released from the hospital and is “back to his happy self."