17-year-old Tyra Winters isn’t just renowned at her high school for being an excellent cheerleader—she is also now making national headlines for saving the life of a choking toddler last month.
Tyra and her teammates from Rockwall High School in Texas had been aboard a homecoming parade float, waving to the crowd when she saw a woman holding a toddler and crying for help.
The 2-year-old boy, who had been choking on a piece of candy, was quickly turning purple when Tyra spotted him from the float.
The boy’s mother, Nicole Hornback, says that she had tried to perform the Heimlich maneuver on her son, but since she never learned how to perform the technique properly, she failed to dislodge the candy.
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“I just happened to look over to him and there was no noise, there was no coughing, there was no breathing,” Hornback told KTVT in the interview below. “And at that moment that’s when I tried to give him the Heimlich, and I’ve never taken a class. To feel so useless as a mother was the most terrifying thing in my life.”
After Hornback started calling for help, Tyra jumped off of the float and ran to the distressed mother’s side. The senior then grabbed the toddler, turned him upside down, and dislodged the candy simply by giving him three firm slaps on the back.
Tyra says that she learned how to help choking children as a result of her mother working in the medical field—and Hornback could not be more grateful for the teen’s intervention.
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by KTVT
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