CPR skills save toddler from drowning

A two-year-old girl who was found floating face down in a backyard swimming pool in Surrey, B.C., was saved by a quick-thinking family friend who remembered his CPR training from decades ago.

When the girl's mother first discovered her in the pool on Devonshire Drive, the toddler had stopped breathing and was turning blue.

A friend of the family, Mario Knezevic, was at home a short distance from the pool, when he heard the mother screaming for help.

"I just hear the scream," said Mario, "and I almost jump over the table."

Knezevic estimated the girl had been in the water for as long as five minutes, but he flew into action, drawing on the emergency training he got in a cardiopulmonary resuscitation course more than two decades ago.

"When I panicked, it all came back to me, exactly like I was in the classroom 26 years ago," said Knezevic.

"I put her down here on the concrete and give her CPR. And when I saw her blue mouth, almost black, I really didn't think she would come back ever," he said.

"I didn't know what to do, and [the mother] said do something, and I was trying and there wasn't a chance, but six times I pump her and nothing happens. She didn't give me any signs of life," he said.

But Knezevic didn't give up. He continued with the CPR skills he was struggling to recall.

"Pumping, pumping, nothing, and then I started to blow and then when I'm pushing, the water came back in my mouth and I spit it out," he said.

"And I pushed again and I saw the water, and I saw her eyes scrambling and I knew that she was coming back," he said.

"I kept pushing and then she coughed and then I knew that it was done," he said.

"At the moment I was really conscious clear, but afterwards I had a shock," he said.

Shortly afterward emergency personal arrived and the girl was transported by air ambulance to hospital.

Police said she is now breathing on her own and has a good chance of recovery.

The girl would not have survived if not for Knezevic, according to emergency personnel who are calling him a hero.

But Knezevic ultimately credited the CPR course he took decades ago for saving the girl's life. 

"I'm telling you if I didn't have that course I couldn't have saved her.…That wasn't her time to die," said Mario.