Critical action
Boy uses first aid skills to save sister’s life
Heroes don’t often think of themselves as such.
Garrett Williams didn’t have much to say when asked about what happened during a ride home from school last week when the 10- year- old quickly, and calmly, sprang into action as his sister started choking on, of all things, a Lifesaver.
“Adults appreciate more what he did than he does himself,” said Glenna Oldford, an educational assistant at Frank H. MacDonald Elementary in Thorburn, Pictou County, who taught Garrett during an afterschool St. John Ambulance course.
Garrett’s grandparents had picked him and his sisters up last Wednesday while his mother Carla was still at work. During the drive, sixyear- old Shanna started to choke on the candy. Her grandparents expected her to be able to cough it up, Carla Williams said, but realized she couldn’t when her lips started turning blue and she stopped making noise.
Not knowing what to do, her grandfather stopped the car and began pressing on the front of her chest.
“I was watching my grandfather do it wrong,” Garrett said. “I jumped over the car seats and I did the Heimlich. And then we left.”
Garrett said his grandparents were scared, but he wasn’t.
Oldford said Garrett told her, “I said to my poppa, ‘I know what to do.’ I lifted her up once and out it popped.”
The course – called We Can Help – is offered to students in Grades 3- 5 at the elementary school and teaches introductory first aid and safety awareness. They go over things like recognizing when someone isn’t breathing or is injured and what to do – from what to tell a 911 operator to the Heimlich. Garrett took it two years ago.
“I teared up,” Oldford said about her reaction when she heard Garrett’s story. “What I’m doing is making a difference. I don’t always know that it’s making a difference.”
She said the afternoon this happened, coincidentally, she had just sent home notices with students that the course is being offered again in April.
While students have told her in the past that they knew they had to seek help or knew to apply pressure when someone was bleeding, this is the first time since she started teaching the course more than 10 years ago that it helped save a life.
“This little boy had the confidence to step up and take control.”
Carla Williams said she thinks it’s important for families to know that there’s a course like this out there that their children can take.
It had been Garrett’s idea to sign up, his mother said, noting that his dad is active in the fire department and she’s a registered nurse.
“… I was really happy he wanted to take the course when it came available and then that he was actually able to use it because often times we take it and think, ‘Am I really ever going to be able to do it if I have to do it?’ And for a 10- year- old to be able to just kind of recall that and not get worked up and just do it, is pretty impressive.”
Williams said her daughter could have died if Garrett hadn’t been there.
“If it saves one kid’s life, it’s worth it.”