An officer in training managed his first save as a rookie cop while he wasn’t even on the clock.
Officer Mohamed Hacham of the Melvindale Police Department in Michigan was hanging out at home on Tuesday night when he heard someone screaming and immediately sprung into action.
“It was like a disaster going on. The yelling from the corner to here was so loud with the windows closed, and I was like ‘this is something big,’” he told local Fox affiliate WJBK-TV.
Hacham’s police radio alerted him that a baby was in distress, and he quickly raced towards the scene on foot with his brother.
When the pair arrived, they found a panicked mother and a choking toddler surrounded by screaming onlookers.
Hacham took charge of the situation and assessed the baby’s condition, noting that the boy’s eyes were rolling into the back of his head.
With his training guiding his actions, Hacham flipped the boy over and administered a few rapid blows to the child’s back in an attempt to dislodge the object.
“I’m just talking to the kid – me and the kid – and I’m just like, no that’s not going to happen. Not on my hands. That’s not going to happen, not today,” the junior officer recalled.
“Whole time, I’m just telling the little boy, come on, let’s wake up,” he told local outlet WDIV-TV.
After a few blows, Hacham got a response from the victim. “Wake up, you got this, and he woke up he started coughing up rice and little things of chicken. My whole goal was this kid’s not dying in my arms.”
Mohammad Zughayar, who witnessed the rescue, lauded Hacham for his quick thinking.
“If it wasn’t for Mo on this, I don’t know what could have happened because if he didn’t know what he was doing or if he wasn’t the one helping, then I don’t want to say it, but the child wouldn’t be with us anymore,” he remarked.
But Hacham doesn’t think his efforts were anything out of the ordinary. “That kid’s life, anybody could have saved it, but luckily I was there.”
He encouraged others to not be reliant on first responders when it comes to saving choking children.
“You can go on YouTube – it’s a three-minute video, and it will show you exactly what to do,” he advised.
The choking baby isn’t the first, or even second child Hacham has rescued in the last month. In the past few weeks, he has reportedly saved a baby who was locked inside of a hot car, and freed a boy who was tied to a fence.
Another heroic police officer saved a choking baby this week, and his efforts were captured on body camera footage.
Colorado Deputy Nick Pacheco saved a one-month old baby who was choking on breast mild and cereal who had turn “blue,” from falling unconscious and not breathing.
He began performing CPR on the child, to both help the boy breath and dislodge the substance.
The baby was taken to a local hospital to be medically assessed, and has since been released back home.
