{"id":358855,"date":"2026-07-31T14:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/358855\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T14:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:20:07","slug":"heroes-teen-lifeguards-save-5-year-old-at-florida-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/358855\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroes: Teen lifeguards save 5-year-old at Florida beach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. (WWSB) &#8211; A family vacation turned from a nightmare into a miracle at a Volusia County beach Thursday, thanks to the quick actions of two young lifeguards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">A 5-year-old boy from Atlanta was pulled from the water unconscious and not breathing at Silver Beach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Despite calm conditions, the child had slipped underwater and was found by his family, motionless with a head injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Because the family was swimming directly in front of a staffed lifeguard tower, help arrived in seconds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Dempsey Manhart, a 16-year-old lifeguard in only his sixth week on the job, heard the screams for help and sprinted into the water. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">He carried the boy to shore, where his partner, 19-year-old Mackenzie Malone, was waiting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Malone checked for a pulse and found none. The pair immediately began CPR.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cTo be quite honest, you know, it was just kind of like &#8230; It\u2019s our job and like you know, get right going through, and like you know, this is what we trained for,\u201d Manhart said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">After just two rounds of compressions, the boy coughed up water and began to cry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Volusia County Beach Safety Deputy Chief A.J. Miller confirmed the child was taken to a hospital where he is was reported in stable condition and being held for observation.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WWSB. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. (WWSB) &#8211; A family vacation turned from a nightmare into a miracle at a Volusia&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[513,28,30,29,120534,723,3997,5090],"class_list":["post-358855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-beach","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-lifeguards","tag-rescue","tag-silver","tag-volusia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}