Highlighting the importance of water safety for children is crucial. One family learned this lesson the hard way when their 3-year-old daughter nearly lost her life from drowning. Fortunately, the 10-year-old sister was nearby, and her quick thinking saved her sister’s life. She has been hailed a hero after the event.
Jayla and her little sister, 3-year-old Kali, were swimming at the pool of the apartment complex.
Surveillance footage from the apartment complex shows Kali walking into the shallow end of the pool with an inflatable device around her waist. As she jumped off of one of the top steps, the momentum put her head-first into the water, causing her body to be stuck upside down in the inner tube.
In the video, Kali is able to escape the inner tube, but the water was too deep.
Jayla was in the deeper end of the swimming pool when Kali first went under. When she realized her little sister was under the water, drowning, she raced into the swimming pool to pull her out.
“She was, like, heavy, so I had to pull her by her hair, and then I grabbed her by her waist and pulled her up,” Jayla said
Once pulled from the pool, the girls’ aunt along with a staff member of the apartment complex frantically administered CPR, while another witness called 911.
Police Sergeant Ed, received the call and rushed to the scene. The father of a little girl himself, Ed says he felt particularly connected to the case.
“I saw my little girl laying there, wearing the same kind of little bathing suit she wears,” Ed said. “Same little hair pulled up in a little bun up top. You kind of have to push past that and do what you’re trained to do.”
As for Kali, who was rushed to the emergency room in critical condition, it was her big sister’s quick rescue that led her to a full recovery. The toddler spent two weeks in the hospital before being released on Friday.
The girls’ mother, Daneshia, says she feels incredibly lucky to be able to take her daughter home.
“I’m fortunate to get to take my baby home after two weeks,” she said.
Daneshia, who wasn’t at the pool that day, said she got a call from her sister to come to the hospital’s ICU. It was there that she watched the surveillance footage of her older daughter’s heroic actions. She says she knows Kali may not be alive today if it weren’t for Jayla’s quick response. The 10-year-old even started performing CPR before anyone else reached Kali, which she says she learned on TV.
“As a 10-year-old, to think about all of that in a traumatic situation, I’m so proud of her; I don’t even know what to do,” Daneshia said.
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