TORRINGTON – It’s a parent’s worst nightmare, when what’s supposed to be an afternoon of fun at the river turns to tragedy with a misstep on slippery rocks puttting a 12-year-old’s life in danger.
That was the scene Saturday along the North Platte River access at the south end of Pioneer Park in Torrington. Fortunately for this particular 12-year-old, a friend and a former lifeguard were on hand.
The young victim, identified only as Kyle at the family’s request, was in the middle of the river about 5 p.m. as Amber Back of Torrington started gathering her charges together to call it a day.
“Everyone was swimming and having fun,” Amber recalled Monday not far from where Saturday’s events transpired.
“One of the boys turned and flagged us down,” she said. “He said ‘Kyle went underwater and hasn’t come up yet.’
“At first, I thought it was just a way for the kids to keep swimming for a few more minutes,” Amber said. “Then Caleb went over there and asked that one question: ‘Where is he?’ Panic set in right away with me and I just went in the water.”
Caleb is Caleb David-Park. At 10-years-old, Caleb didn’t even stop to think. When the boys yelled Kyle was in danger, had slipped under the turbulent surface of the lake not far below the dam near the southwest corner of the park, he went right in to look for his friend.
“I was running, literally running,” Caleb said later. “I was running underwater.
“Kyle couldn’t swim in a deep spot and I think he got caught in the undercurrent,” he said. “What I think happened is he slipped and I think he hit his head, maybe got knocked out a little.”
As Caleb and another boy pulled Kyle near to the shore, Amber waded out to meet them, negotiating large chunks of broken concrete, slippery rock and the current. Together, the trio muscled Kyle’s limp body to the river bank, but couldn’t make it any further, she said.
“His lips were completely blue, he was not breathing,” Amber recalled Monday. “I put my arms out and they handed me his lifeless body.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is not okay,’” she said. “I couldn’t get him out. He weighed so much.”
Amber, who worked three years as a lifeguard in her youth, muscled him over to a relatively flat rock, where she propped him up and started performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. In the aftermath, she recalled she wasn’t working at a conscious level, supporting the boy’s head with her left hand and compressing his chest with her right, all the time yelling for the other children to call 9-1-1.
“None of that (lifeguard training) came to mind,” Amber said. “I honestly don’t know why I started chest compressions.
“I don’t know why it worked,” she said, shaking her head. “It shouldn’t have worked. It doesn’t make sense.”
But the important thing is, it did work. Eventually, Kyle started breathing. Amber watched as his lips pursed. She described it like someone sucking on a lemon. His lips turned from blue, to white, to pink.
And Kyle started breathing.
“But he wasn’t talking,” Caleb said. “He was just making noises. It didn’t seem like he knew who we were.”
In a matter of minutes, which seemed like hours to the rescuers on the shores of the North Platte River, a Torrington ambulance crew and Goshen County Sheriff’s deputies arrived. They “scooped him up” from Amber’s arms and whisked him to Torrington Community Hospital, where he was stabilized before being flown by helicopter ambulance to Denver Children’s Hospital in Colorado.
Even as the ambulance took Kyle away, Goshen County deputies started interviewing his rescuers at Pioneer Park. With Kyle safely on his way to the hospital, the gravity of the events started to sink in on those involved.
It hit Caleb what he’d done “when the cops said, ‘You’re today’s hero,’” he said. “My heart was still pumping 200 miles a second.”
For her part, Amber dropped Caleb off at a family barbecue he was scheduled to attend before heading to Main Street Market to tell his mother, Shelby David, what had happened. Still shaken, it took Amber a couple of tries to get across to Shelby that Caleb was safe and what he’d done.
“On one side, I was happy, but I was also scared,” Shelby said. “I didn’t know my son would put himself in that position, would put himself in danger, to save someone else.
“I know he’s a good kid – he’s really kind,” she said. “But that – I’m really proud of him. I’m so proud of how he acted. He saved Kyle and everyone’s okay.”
Kyle’s family said Monday he was home and, despite some lingering issues related to the drowning, is recuperating well. There are some additional visits to the doctor in his future, his mother said, as his young body comes back from the shock.
And, by Monday, the story was all around Caleb’s school, he said. He was asked to relate the events of the weekend to his class, where everyone was calling him a hero.
“That’s what everybody said, every adult said that,” he said. “I really don’t know why.
“I felt scared at first,” Caleb said, thinking back to Saturday afternoon. “I didn’t know if I got him out in time. Now, I’m just hoping he’s okay.”
