A 5-year-old was drowning in a Myrtle Beach hotel pool. This couple saved her life.
Erin Russell had just been re-certified to perform CPR a couple weeks earlier when she heard screams while lounging by the pool in the evening at Ocean Reef Resort in Myrtle Beach.
Russell and her husband Joseph, both surgical technologists for more than 20 years, ran toward the screams, where they found a woman attempting to perform CPR on an unresponsive 5-year-old girl.
Noticing the woman was clearly an emotional relative, the couple offered to intervene, asked a bystander to call 911 and performed CPR on the girl until paramedics arrived, when Joseph picked her up and carried her to the ambulance, Erin recalled.
The next 24 hours were “heart wrenching,” Erin Russell said, not knowing whether the girl would survive, face life-altering impacts, or if they would ever know the outcome either way.
The Durham, North Carolina, couple visited Myrtle Beach in mid-August for their daughter’s softball tournament. After the pool incident, Russell admits she kept replaying the evening in her mind, hoping she did everything correctly.
“She was only five, I used two hands, did I break any ribs?” she recalled of her fears.
That next evening, a stranger approached them by the pool and asked if they were the ones who performed CPR on the little girl. When they responded affirmatively, they were invited up to the 15th floor, where they were told the family of the girl they saved wanted to thank them.
“It was at that moment that it hit me,” Russell said. “We had saved her.”
They were greeted by a big hug from the girl, Andrea, who was thankfully in perfect condition, she said.
Andrea has since started kindergarten, and the Russells plan to maintain contact with her and her family, who also live in North Carolina.
“My husband and I feel tied to her,” Erin Russell said. “I hope the family she has will keep us involved through some of her big events throughout her life.”
Alexander Byrd Jr. was arrested and charged by Myrtle Beach Police with unlawful neglect of a child in relation to the incident. He referred a reporter to his attorney, Ralph Wilson Jr., who did not respond to a request for comment.
Police allege Byrd, who was responsible for the child failed to watch her while he was near the Jacuzzi, and she went into the pool and was under water for five minutes. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Russell, acknowledging she wasn’t watching the family before she heard the screams, said she doesn’t believe Byrd should be facing charges because this was an accident.
“I think it was a tragic accident with a great outcome,” she said.
She noted that Byrd and other family members showed clear concern for the girl, and their clothes were dry, disputing the narrative that they were in the Jacuzzi.
This story was originally published September 25, 2020 at 8:00 AM.
