A heroic Kansas man has stepped in to resuscitate a drowning boy with autism in an emotional rescue who was filmed earlier this month.
4-year-old Xavier Rigni, who is non-verbal, came out of his mother Lawrence’s apartment and figured out how to enter the locked pool of the complex on May 18, according to The Topeka Capital-Journal.
The boy, wearing diapers, took a step into the deep end and was immediately completely immersed, a video from the security showed.
He began to try to reach for something to climb on in vain and quickly gave up.
Neighbor Maddox Westerhouse, 12, saw Xavier underwater and told his father, Tom, who jumped over the locked fence and pulled the boy out of the water.
He was submerged for 200 seconds – nearly three and a half minutes, according to the article.
Tom Westerhouse, a former lifeguard, compressed his chest for nearly three minutes until authorities arrived. When Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Chief of Staff Rob Flip arrived on the scene, the boy was awake and breathing.
The actions of the father and son were “one of the most heroic things.” [he had] witnesses, “Fleip said at a ceremony Thursday to celebrate the rescue.
“We are very happy to celebrate this positive result,” Fleip said, “because too often these stories do not have a positive result.”
The boy’s mother, Alexis Rigni, thanked her neighbors during the Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Department.
She told reporters that she had just left the boy for just a few seconds to check on his sister when he flew to the pool.
“Xavier is my best friend and I don’t know what I would have done without him,” Rigni said through tears.
Westerhaus last received CPR training 15 years ago, according to the report.
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