By Dave Statter
STATter911.com
BELTSVILLE, Md. — A fast acting Maryland State Trooper and off-duty volunteer firefighter helped to rescue a 5-year-old boy with a seat belt wrapped around his neck on Interstate 95 Monday night.
DeAndre Harris, 5, of Baltimore, is still in critical condition and unconscious at Childrens Hospital, according to Maryland State Police. It’s unclear how the rear seat belt got wrapped around DeAndre’s neck. It does not appear to have been a seat belt malfunction.
State Trooper C.M. Hammond responded to the radio dispatch and discovered the child’s mother in a “hysterical” state outside her SUV on the shoulder of the north-bound lanes of the busy highway just south of the Powder Mill Rd. exit.
College Park Barracks Commander Lt. Carl Miller tells 9NEWS NOW Trooper Hammond “saw the seat belt entangled around the child’s neck. He said the child appeared lifeless.” Hammond used a State Police issued knife to cut the seat belt from around DeAndre’s neck.
As he was preparing to perform CPR on the youngster Ken Wilson, a volunteer firefighter/EMT at the Laurel Volunteer Fire Department, who had heard the emergency dispatch while on his way home, pulled up on the scene. “The heartbeat starts a little bit, yes” when Wilson heard that a child apparently wasn’t breathing.
Arriving on the scene, Wilson opened De’Andre’s airway and was preparing to perform mouth-to-mouth when Fire Department paramedics arrived on the scene.
State Police are still investigating to determine how the seat belt came to be wrapped around DeAndre’s neck.