3-year-old’s life saved due to the actions of Winnipegger

Thanks to the heroic actions of one Winnipegger, a 3-year-old is alive after a family day at the beach. A stark reminder of how dangerous swimming can be, as it continues to claim more lives yearly than any other common recreational activity.

“I heard someone yell whose child is this we need to do CPR,” explained Christian Clavelle, First-Aid expert at Canadian First-Aid Training.

It just so happens, Clavelle was at St. Malo beach the day with his family when a 3-year-old child wandered off and ended up face down in the water.

It wasn’t until the child was found by a passerby who screamed for help, which led Clavelle to act. The child was initially found unresponsive, so Clavelle performed CPR, the first time he had to use his training to save a life.

“Put the child on the ground and immediately assessed not breathing, so started compressing and prepared to do some breathing, but as I was compressing water and stuff was coming up.”

Clavelle says the child was unconscious for seven minutes until he started to breathe again and was transported to hospital, where he is expected to make a full recovery.

While Clavelle knows this was an accident, he feels it should be a wake-up call, as statistics show, that all child drownings are due to parents being absent or distracted.

“If I hadn’t been there and been on top of it, I think it would have been much worse,” said Clavelle.

“This is explaining to the children to not got to far, reiterating that it doesn’t take long for things to happen and in this case, it didn’t take long were talking a few minutes.”

Clavelle hopes this serves as a reminder for everyone to get CPR training, adding, you’ll never know when you might need to save someone’s life.

“I think everyone likes the idea of doing training, but it becomes a nice to have rather than a need to have and I think that’s the mindset that needs to change a little bit.”

As for Clavelle, he hasn’t been in touch with the family or the child since the incident but says it would be nice to one day be reunited.