A Wisconsin fourth grader is being called a hero, after she rushed to save a classmate who was choking in Racine.
For Essence Collier, lunchtime on Tuesday at Racine’s Fratt Elementary, took a sudden and serious turn.
“I just saw that she was holding her neck, and I rushed up there as fast as I can,” nine-year-old Essence said.
Teacher Samantha Bradshaw was filling-in in the classroom during lunch on Tuesday.
“Out of nowhere, I see Essence get up, and kind of dart across the classroom,” Bradshaw said. “I didn’t know what was going on. I kind of said, stop.”
But before anyone else realized what was happening, Essence reacted.
“I see her go to the other student and wrapped her arms around her and performed the Heimlich Maneuver on her,” Bradshaw said. “I have never seen a student react in that way before.”
The classmate’s airway was cleared and within seconds, the girl was breathing fine.
Essence and her classmates would not normally have been in their classroom at that time. They would have been down the hall in the lunchroom. But Tuesday was Election Day, and the cafeteria was being used as a polling place, putting Essie at her desk and in the right place at just the right time.
Local news asked the girl how she knew what to do in that emergency situation, and Essence explained that she had come across an instructional video teaching children how to do the Heimlich Maneuver two years earlier, when she was seven, and the lesson stayed with her.
The Racine Unified School Board plans to honor Essence for her heroics at a board meeting in late November.
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