A father and his 12-year-old son rescued a 4-year-old boy with autism from drowning in a Kansas pool.
Surveillance footage showed the 4-year-old, Xavier Rigney, who is non-verbal and autistic, jumping into a pool on May 18 after somehow getting through a locked fence, 6ABC reported. Maddox Westerhouse, saw that Xavier was drowning, and his friends yelled at him to go and help, the report continued.
“Xavier was under the water for 3 minutes and 22 seconds,” Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Battalion Chief Rob Fleeup said in a statement shared on YouTube. (RELATED: California Man Arrested For Allegedly Luring More Than 80 Children Into Making Illegal Videos)
Westerhouse ran back to his apartment to find his father, Tom Westerhouse, the report continued. The senior Westerhouse jumped the fence into the pool area and pulled Xavier out of the water, according to the surveillance footage shared by Fleeup. He then conducted CRP for nearly three minutes before Xavier started coughing up water and breathing again, the outlet continued.
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“When he started to cough up water and everything, I knew that was a good sign,” Tom said in the statement. The Fire Department said that had he not acted, it might have been too late for the toddler, ABC noted.
Xavier’s mother was caring for her 4-month-old when she realized that he was missing, according to the statement. “He’s my best friend, so I don’t know what I would do without him,” she said. She noticed emergency responders at the apartment complex, and followed them to find Xavier, 6ABC report.
Children with autism are 160 times more likely to die from drowning compared to the general pediatric population, according to WebMD.