What do you do when you see a young boy choking? Even worse, what do you do when you see a young boy choking while you are busy dancing on a float in a parade?
If you are this one girl in particular, you do everything in your power to save that young boy’s life.
17-year-old Texas cheerleader Tyra Winters was doing just that — cheerleading atop a float alongside her fellow teammates — when she discovered the struggling young boy. She heard desperate shouts from the boy’s mother. Her team as well as the football players were from Rockwall High School, located near Dallas.
Tyra watched the boy as his face began to turn “super, super red,” Tyra shared via ABC News.
At this moment, Tyra could have hoped for the best. She could have continued to ride the float and trust that the mother would take care of it. She could have hoped that someone else would have taken the matter into their hands…However, that is not what she did.
Instead, the teenage girl did what any hero would do and jumped off the float and into the crowd in attempt to save the little boy’s life. “At this point, he’s kind of turning purple,” she goes on to explain.
“I picked him up and then I tilted him downwards and gave him two or three back thrusts. He then was spitting everything up.”
Tyra performed the Heimlich maneuver on the little boy only to find that it did not work. The boy’s mother tried it as well.
“I just literally was holding him out and just running through the crowd trying to hand him off to anyone,” Nicole went on to tell CBS News.
“She saved my baby,” the boy’s mother, Nicole Hornback said. “I commend her for being a teenager and being trained.” Nicole went on to express her gratitude for the young girl, who exhibited a serious braveness that was necessary to save her son’s life that day.
The mother and young woman shared a hug just a few days after the scary event, as the mother is of course, forever grateful.
When asked about her previous training, Tyra shared that the maneuver is a move she learned from her mother, which she then, of course, took with her.
This is a day that both Tyra and Nicole with never forget. And if there is any good lesson to be learned here, it is truly that every person should be trained to handle emergencies like this. Of course, you hope that nothing like this will ever happen but unfortunately, you truly never know. You can be eating in a fine restaurant or watching a movie in a theater when all of a sudden, someone’s life is in danger and needs saving.
Even if we all just take the time to formally learn the Heimlich maneuver, it could save a great deal of stress and tragedy. Who knows when something can happen — it is always best to be prepared. Better safe than sorry! Nicole and Tyra know this all too well!
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