A week after police helped rescue a choking baby in the Bronx, the family and the officers who helped reunited at the 44th Precinct.<\/p>\n
“I’m a father of two, so I immediately, I already know that’s a parent’s worst nightmare,” Officer Julio Arias said.<\/p>\n
Arias and Officer Karolyn Abreu Garcia were on their way to another call when they were flagged down by good Samaritans who were trying to help Janibel Montano \u2014 whose son, Jheyler Montero, 10 months old, was limp and unresponsive.<\/p>\n
She had noticed her son was quiet in his crib, and when she went to check on him, found him face down and not breathing. Montano tried slapping his back, but wasn’t successful.<\/p>\n
She recalled, in Spanish, “I went downstairs because I was very desperate and nervous. And then the neighbors came out and helped me, too. And then these heroes who you see here appeared, and I truly can’t find the words to thank them enough for all the great work they did. And they helped me, thank God.”<\/p>\n
They’re still not sure what Montero might have been choking on \u2014 but Arias jumped into action using training he received when his own children were born and as an NYPD officer.<\/p>\n
“I was giving him the back slaps,” he said. “I had felt something fall off, and that’s when he started crying and started breathing again. So once he started crying and breathing, I didn’t really look to see what it was. I just wanted to make sure that he was all right. So I picked him up, saw that he was crying, that he was okay, and from there I just took him, consoling him, make sure he was all right.”<\/p>\n
Montano described the moment she heard her son cry again: “It gave me relief from heaven to earth. Because when I was doing it, and the others were doing it, he didn’t do anything; he didn’t react. And I turned him and I saw his face, nothing. And then, when he was able to do it, I felt relief.”<\/p>\n
The officers said they’re just glad they were able to be there.<\/p>\n
“We’re grateful that we were able to help the baby. I feel like I was breathing again when I saw the baby crying,” Abreu Garcia said.<\/p>\n
They’d like to keep in touch with the family \u2014 and even hope to pick up a Christmas present for Montero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A week after police helped rescue a choking baby in the Bronx, the family and the officers who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[2296,387,25,128,231,5215,9,24,12,63,308,129,131,130,27,200],"class_list":["post-363306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-bronx","tag-human-interest","tag-jillian-jorgensen","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-public-safety","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}