A Los Angeles Rams coach became an everyday hero when he rescued a three-year-old child.
46-year-old NFL defensive coordinator Raheem Morris was vacationing with his wife, Nicole, and their three children in Las Vegas over Memorial Day weekend.
The family was relaxing poolside at the Encore resort and casino, when he witnessed another man pull a young boy who was limp and not breathing from the water.
The boy’s father rushed him over to the lifeguard’s station for help and a member of the staff began performing CPR after they discovered the child had no pulse. That’s when Morris stepped in.
“I saw people calling 911 so my first question was, where is the AED?” he said in reference to the automatic external defibrillator that delivers electric shocks to the jumpstart the heart into rhythm.
An AED was recently utilized on during Monday Night Football, when Bills player Damar Hamlin was shocked back to life after a tackle from a Bengals rival stopped his heart in a freak occurrence.
Morris grabbed the facility’s nearest device and rushed it back to the lifeguard station, where a ER physician, Dr. Andrew Oleksyn, had already began administering chest compressions by the time he returned.
“I was able to hand the AED to him, get it open for him, put the pads on the child, and he ended up being OK.”
Morris administered the AED between Oleksyn’s compressions, and the boy eventually spat up water when he was revived.
“When [Oleksyn] says, ‘He has a pulse,’ I started clapping,” Morris told “Good Morning America.”
Morris told ESPN that Hamlin’s collapse and the tragic death of Buccaneers linebacker Shaquil Barrett’s 2-year-old daughter, who drowned in a home pool, has raised NFL’s awareness of life saving first aid.
He credited a recent training course that Ram’s VP of sports medicine and performance, Reggie Scott, walked the staff through, for his knowledge about using an AED.
“I’m just thankful I knew what to do,” Morris commented. “You just never know when you’re going to need that stuff.”
The boy, identified as Wyatt Stanley, was taken to a local hospital and released a day later.
Morris and Oleksyn reunited with Wyatt at a Ram’s practice two weeks after the scary incident.
“We are truly so happy that Raheem was there and Dr. Andrew was there,” Wyatt’s mother Kelseigh Stanley told GMA.
“Truly, again, miracle. God placed them all directly where they need to be.”
