Father and son honored by city for heroic rescue of 4-year-old boy with autism from drowning, all captured on security video
The Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Department released surveillance video that shows a father and son springing into action to save a 4-year-old boy with autism from drowning.The City of Lawrence, Kansas, honored a heroic father-and-son duo whoin an apartment complex's pool earlier this month.
The little boy, Xavier Rigney, briefly got out of his mother's sight and somehow made his way through a locked fence before jumping into the pool. "His head goes completely under the water. His mouth and nose never come up above the water, and that's why we say they don't have the ability to scream," Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Lt. Jeff Krall, a paramedic who lost a child of his own in 2008, explained at a press conference."What you see with his arms, you see just a little bit of movement, we call it climbing, they're trying to climb out of the water.
Tom Westerhouse jumped a 6-foot fence, pulled the 4-year-old boy out of the water, then started performing CPR. Maddox Westerhouse, 12, saw Xavier drowning and ran to get his dad, Tom, from their nearby apartment.