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Off-duty Mass. cop helps save drowning boy

Off-duty first responders helped save a boy drowning in a remote pond

By James Hinton
The Boston Herald

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — A 3-year-old boy drowning in a remote pond at Myles Standish State Forest in Plymouth was plucked from the water by family and resuscitated by off-duty first-responders yesterday.

“I was just sitting in the sun, watching the water, and all of a sudden I saw this little girl taking a boy out of the water and his body was limp and everyone started screaming,” said Mallory Reis, an off-duty Cranston police officer who was camping with her family.

“I got up and someone yelled, ‘He needs CPR, he’s dying,’ so I sprinted across the beach and said, ‘I know CPR’ and started that and chest compressions.”

An off-duty firefighter also was among roughly 40 people at the edge of Curlew Pond, and he rushed to Reis’ side to help with the boy while waiting for officials to arrive, Reis said.

“When we took him out of the water, he was blue, not breathing, limp and incoherent, very not alive,” said Reis, of Johnston, R.I. “He began wheezing . . . he came to a little, breathing and gurgling sounds in his chest, he was responding to us by blinking.”

“The minute he came to was the biggest sigh of relief,” Reis said. “We’re there thinking, ‘C’mon buddy, come through.”

The boy, referred to as ‘Junior’ by a large group of family members surrounding Reis, cried and threw up, spitting out water and crackers by the time the fire department arrived.

Plymouth Fire Department first responders arrived at about 1 p.m. after receiving a 911 call about a possible drowning.

Upon arrival, they found the 3-year-old boy “semi-conscious and alert” on the shoreline, said battalion Chief Tony Thompson.

Responders continued CPR, and the child was taken by ambulance to Jordan Hospital in Plymouth.

The boy later was flown to a Boston hospital.

There are no lifeguards at the pond, Thompson said.

Copyright 2011 Boston Herald Inc.