(NewsNation) — A police officer in Michigan is being called a hero after saving the life of an 18-month-old toddler during a traffic stop.
Warren Police Officer Brenden Fraser was performing distracted driving enforcement duties Friday when he spotted a Chevy Camaro speeding by him. As Fraser pulled over the car, he noticed that the driver was waving his arms in an attempt to flag him down.
“It just happened to catch my eye the way he was driving down 12 Mile,” Fraser said during an interview on “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.” “Once I got up to the car, it made sense he was driving towards the hospital, so his speed was definitely much greater than the rest of the cars.”
As Fraser approached the car, the driver frantically explained that his 18-month-old nephew was not breathing. The Warren Police Department said the child was turning blue and his eyes were rolling to the back of his head.
“Officer Fraser remained calm and immediately took charge of the situation,” Warren Police Commissioner William Dwyer said.
Video footage shows Fraser taking the child and performing multiple back-blows to clear the child’s airway. After a few seconds, the 18-month-old regurgitated a liquid and started breathing on his own again.
“In the moment, you really don’t think about much other than just relying on the training that we received as police officers,” Fraser said, later adding: “It was a huge sigh of relief for all of us.”
Other officers rushed to the scene and took the child to Ascension Macomb Hospital, about a mile from the scene.
“My partners that were there haven’t gotten nearly as much credit as they deserve. We were less than a mile from the hospital, which was in our favor. And it was just a great outcome. It could have been much worse,” Fraser said.
Now, Fraser is happy to report that the toddler is out of the hospital and back home with his family.
“I didn’t expect any type of praise to this amount. It’s quite overwhelming, all the attention that this has received. I’m just glad that it was a good outcome and he’s back home with family,” Fraser said.
Dwyer could not be prouder of Fraser’s action.
“Officer Fraser’s actions on this traffic stop are nothing short of heroic. This incident shows that police work and traffic stops are not always about writing tickets or making arrests. In this case, what started off as a traffic stop for speeding resulted in Officer Fraser saving a child’s life,” Dwyer said in a news release.
Fraser’s supervisors have nominated him for a lifesaving award from the Warren Police Department.