Officer Follows His Instincts and Saves Autistic Boy Drowning at Bottom of Pond
On Thursday morning, an officer in Independence, Missouri, proved his mettle after following his intuition and quickly locating a missing child under difficult circumstances. The boy, a 10-year-old who has autism and is…
On Thursday morning, an officer in Independence, Missouri, proved his mettle after following his intuition and quickly locating a missing child under difficult circumstances.
The boy, a 10-year-old who has Autism and is non-verbal, escaped from his driver on his way to school and took off into an abandoned area, right toward a pond.
He tore into the water, and then he disappeared.
Police got a call around 9:30 a.m. concerning the incident, and officer Dustin Stewart was on the scene within minutes.
He didn’t know exactly where the child was, but he followed his gut and went in immediately.
“I jump in with him,” Stewart told WDAF-TV. “I feel around for a little bit, swim throughout the pond.”
“I eventually feel him against my leg. I reach down and pull him out.”
The boy had been underwater for three or four minutes, and when Stewart pulled him to the surface, he was unresponsive.
“He was not breathing,” Steward recalled. “He was blue. Soon as they started doing CPR, he was spitting up water.”