Mother saves daughter from pool drain, warns other families
SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE, Fla. (WSVN) -- A mother saved her 4-year-old daughter from drowning after the girl's arm got stuck in a pool drain.
Rose speaks English, Spanish and is learning Mandarin.
She is a little girl with a lot of life, however, on Wednesday she almost lost it. "She was drifting, she was drifting off, she was starting to close her eyes and that's when I jumped in. This is a matter of 25 seconds, that everything happened," said Schmidt-Cozier.
Rose was playing in her pool that afternoon, when her arm got stuck in a suction drain. It took a matter of seconds for Rose to be unconscious. "I tried a couple of times to take the arm out, but I couldn't and that's when I lost it. I started screaming" said Schmidt-Cozier.
Finally pulling Rose out, Schmidt-Cozier's instincts set in and she remembered CPR she learned nine years ago. "I remembered there was something that I needed to do here, and I basically did it like four times, and then I went back to the nose and mouth, and then she started throwing up water," said Schmidt-Cozier.
Rose was lucky, but many other kids are not as fortunate. "Drowning is called the silent killer, it takes just a few seconds, less than a minute, to completely lose consciousness and die," said Candace Rausch of the Miami Children's Hospital Trauma Center.
Experts say make sure your drains are properly screwed in and tight, and watch your kids playing at all times.
"Take a CPR course, and even if they are the best swimmers in the world, anything can happen," said Schmidt-Cozier.
Rose is doing fine and is being monitored at Miami Children's Hospital, just to make sure her lungs are functioning properly.
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