Baby Rescued From Storm Drain

Published: May 8, 2008 | 7005th good news item since 2003

Two Fall River men are being credited with saving the life of a baby who fell into a storm drain over the weekend, Boston television station WCVB reported.

The storm drain is covered now, but it was open enough and slippery enough on Saturday night for a 21-month-old girl to fall in after sliding out of a minivan.

“They’re made out of a granite stone, not cement. And it was wet because it was raining. So, you slip instantly. And a little baby like that, the way the van was parked, she got out of the sliding side door and she slipped,” Bruce Hebert said.

Hebert and another man, Pedro Davila, heard the mother’s cries for help. He immediately grabbed some tools and ran to the scene.

“I opened the manhole, he jumped in. If it wasn’t for the two of us, that little girl wouldn’t be well now,” Hebert said. “I was scared to death. I’m amazed that I didn’t panic, because there was a lot of people panicking.”

When the men pulled the baby out, she was blue after being in the water for about a minute and a half. They started CPR immediately.

“That was like the most beautiful thing in the world that anyone could ever see was that child blinking her eyes and coughing and fussing,” Hebert said. “That was the most beautiful thing in the world.”

The baby, whose identity has not been released, was taken to Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence. She was expected to be OK.

Hebert, who said he has many medical and financial problems, has sometimes wondered “why Jesus keeps me on this Earth.”

He told a Fall River newspaper, “I got my answer tonight. It was to save that little girl.”

Published in Rescues
See also: www.thebostonchannel.com