Pedro Leão, a PSP officer from Lagos, saved a 15 day old baby last week, when the distressed mother rushed into the police station with her, "not breathing and no longer with vital signs".
A car stopped at the roundabout next to the police station, around 1:30 pm, the officer said, “the mother came into the police station crying, saying that the baby was dying, that she was not breathing.” The baby had choked while being fed.
Pedro Leão said that he saw that the baby was purple, “she was not reacting and I immediately started the Heimlich maneuver," which he learned in his police training, a first aid procedure used in situations of suffocation due to airway obstruction. "After two minutes, the baby coughed and breathed again, much to everyone's relief."
The Lagos Volunteer Firefighters were called after another PSP agent called 112. The firefighters stabilised the child and transported her to the Portimão Hospital. The baby was discharged just a few hours after being admitted.
Asked about being called a “hero”, Pedro Leão said that “all of us who leave the house in the morning wearing this uniform are subject to this, being a hero is part of this profession”.
The officer had been involved two or three times in other similar rescues, but never with a child, which he described as a “different feeling”.
