Fifth-grader saves choking teacher’s life
Published: May 25, 2007
Thurgood Marshall Elementary School fifth-grader, Lester Knauls, Jr., has never seen someone perform the Heimlich maneuver.
No one ever taught him first aid techniques.
But, when he saw his teacher, Shirley Hines, choking Tuesday, his instincts took over and he was able to help her breath again.
Now Hines is calling Knauls her little lifesaver.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said. “But he put his little arms around me and just kept giving me the Heimlich maneuver until I was OK .”
The incident happened during lunch on Tuesday. Hines was eating lunch with her students when she experienced an airway obstruction.
“I thought I was doing everything right by not talking while I ate and chewing everything thoroughly,” she said. “But while I was eating my salad, that’s when I felt something get stuck in my throat.”
It was at that moment when Hines started to lose the abilities to breath or talk. She began coughing repeatedly, which caught the attention of Knauls.
“Are you OK,Mrs. Hines?” he asked her.
She shook her head from side to side, so he would know she was in peril. Then she began pointing to her back in an attempt to get him to slap her back hard enough to dislodge the object in her throat.
But somewhere in the back of his mind, Knauls heard a voice tell him to do something else. So, without an idea of how to do it, he went behind her and performed the Heimlich maneuver.
“God just put it in my mind to do it,” he said.
It only took a couple of thrusts to send the object, a piece of lettuce, flying out of Hines’ mouth.
Word quickly spread across the cafeteria, and then the entire school, like a wildfire. Other students were coming up to Knauls to find out what it felt like to be a hero. Fifteen or 20 students had approached him by Wednesday morning to find out how to do the Heimlich maneuver.
For someone who’d never seen the maneuver done before, Knauls had quickly become the expert on the subject among his peers.
But some people are still puzzled about where the natural instinct originated.
“When he got home [Tuesday], the first thing I asked him was ‘Where did you learn that from,’” said his father, Lester Knauls, Sr. “I’m just very proud of him.”
Pride is something Thurgood Marshall Principal Velma Mobley shares when it comes to the fifth-grade lifesaver.
“We’re very fortunate to have a child like Lester [Knauls, Jr.] in this school,” she said. “He’s a good student and a real role model for his classmates. So many times, you only hear the negative things about this county, so it’s refreshing when something good happens to show you this isn’t such a bad place.”
The younger Knauls does have plans to build on his new-found life-saving experience. He wants to take first aid classes, and his dream is to someday become a cardiologist.
There’s no particular reason why he wants to be a heart doctor, it’s just something that interests him, but he does give credit to Hines for giving him the courage to pursue the goal.
“She told me I can do anything I set my mind to,” he said.
His mother, Leslie Knauls, said Hines has had a bigger impact on her son’s life, turning him from a student who made average grades, into a student who always earns A’s and B’s on his class work.
“She’s been such a blessing to us,” Leslie Knauls said. “She works so hard to make these children believe in themselves.”
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