9 years later, officer reunited with boy whose life he saved

LACONIA — Ben Black, a detective sergeant with the Laconia Police Department, had taken a rare opportunity last week to help chaperone his daughter’s field trip, when a woman asked him a question that flooded him with memories from years prior.

“Officer Black, do you remember this little boy you saved?”

The question came from a mother, also a chaperone on the Pleasant Street School field trip aboard the M/S Mount Washington, and with her was her son, Ethan, a member of the same third grade class that includes Black’s daughter.

‘Like lightning’

“It clicked immediately,” Black said afterward. The memory of the moment involving the mother and her son hit him “like lightning.”

On one day in the late fall of 2013, Black was driving through the city in a cruiser when a call came over the radio about an infant, unresponsive and not breathing. It would be an alarming situation for anyone to respond to, but it was particularly anguishing for Black, as he couldn’t help but think of his own wife and baby girl at home.

It happened that he was barely 100 feet from the address when he heard the call. Within seconds, he was out of his cruiser and on his feet.

“I ran up the stairs, heart pounding,” Black said. The mother met him at the top of the stairs, holding her baby, who wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a measurable pulse. Black said he had a storm of emotions raging within, yet was able to put on a face of calm and leaned on his training.

“Inside, I was panicked, too, but I tried to save the kid and do everything I could to help,” Black said. He laid the boy on the floor, he recalls, and started going through his life-saving checklist — check for pulse, check the airways, begin chest compressions — learned through training sessions provided by the Laconia Fire Department. “Those guys are the real heroes,” Black insisted.

Ethan’s mother said she had placed her 10-month-old son down in his crib to rest, heard him start to cry, then suddenly go silent. “I looked over and he was not breathing,” she said. “I called 9-1-1 and took him out of the crib.”

Her son was having a seizure. He’s had several over the years, and can still experience them, but none have been as severe as that day, when his breathing and heartbeat stopped.

“Officer Black was first on the scene. He said, ‘Let me see your son.’ He started CPR right off and basically saved him.”

Black doesn’t recall exactly what he did in that moment — he doesn’t contest the mother’s version of events — but whatever he did, Ethan’s heart was beating again by the time medical responders arrived.

Classmates

“I am just so happy to see Ethan again, that he’s happy and having a great life,” Black said. It’s rare for first responders, who often interact with people when they are having the worst moment, to get to see that person after the crisis has resolved. In this case, Black gets to see Ethan grow up.

It wasn’t from the mother that Black first heard the name “Ethan.” Rather, he had heard his daughter use the name frequently when talking about her classmates. The boy that Black saved as a baby grew up to be one of his daughter’s friends.

“He’s a well-rounded kid,” Ethan’s mother said. “He’s active and happy-go-lucky. He still has seizures now and then, we try and keep him happy as much as possible.” His epilepsy can be triggered by emotional upset, his mother said.

“Thanks again to Officer Black for saving Ethan. Without him, my little boy wouldn’t be here today,” she said.

Black said that meeting Ethan was a gratifying conclusion to what he called a “terrifying” incident nine years ago.

“It was one of the scariest calls I had been on, and there he was doing really well,” Black said. “It was really special,” and now Ethan is part of his daughter’s life. “That’s her friend from class. It’s so nice.”