A 9-year-old Wisconsin elementary school student may have saved a classmate's life by performing the Heimlich maneuver on her while she was choking on food, authorities say.
Essie Collier, a fourth-grader at Racine's Fratt Elementary School, noticed one of her classmates in trouble during lunch Tuesday.
The students were eating in a classroom because the dining hall had been vacated so residents could vote in the midterm elections.
"I saw him holding his neck and I scrambled up as fast as I could
," Essie said.
This blind boy describes how he adapted his World Cup album into braille
Nov. 13, 202201:59
Professor Samantha Bradshaw said Essie put her arms around the student and began to perform the Heimlich maneuver.
Her classmate's airway cleared and within seconds the girl was breathing well.
"I've never seen a student react like that
," Bradshaw said.
This technique involves standing behind the person who is choking, placing a clenched fist just above the navel, grasping the fist with the other hand, and pressing out the object that is obstructing breathing.
Essie said she learned the technique two years earlier, when she was 7, from an instructional YouTube video, and the lesson stuck with her.
The Racine Unified School Board plans to honor Essie at a board meeting in late November for her heroics.
11-year-old girl brutally beaten at Florida school and fears going back to class
Oct. 27, 202202:52
She is not the first minor to save a classmate thanks to techniques learned outside the classroom.
In July, a 7-year-old Latino boy saved a drowning classmate in New York thanks to a first-aid technique he learned on the television series
The Good Doctor
.
And last year an 11-year-old boy saved a choking student and then later that day escorted an elderly woman from a burning house, according to Oklahoma authorities.