Florida mom recounts moments 2-year-old son nearly drowned: 'Don’t take your eye off 'em'
COCOA, Fla. - Anqunette Harvey recounts the moment her two-year-old son, Andre, nearly drowned.
"I walked to the pool, and there [is] everybody swimming and having fun," she explained. "I see a black shadow, and it’s my baby at the bottom of a pool!"
Andre fell into a pool during a birthday party on Saturday evening at Oak Meadows Apartments.
She said he wandered into the pool from a playground when a gate to the fenced-in pool was left open.
"My first instinct is to jump in and grab my baby. So when I went in there, I grabbed him. I pulled him out, and my baby wasn’t breathing, Harvey said.
She jumped into the water after she saw him and began administering CPR, she said.
Despite her best efforts, Andre remained without a pulse. So, she called for help.
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Cocoa police officers arrived on the scene and continued life-saving measures until Andre spit up water and regained his pulse.
Harvey said once Andre regained consciousness, he let out a cry.
"That was a sigh of relief for me to hear my baby's cry," Harvey said.
Andre was in the hospital for three days and fully recovered.
Harvey has some advice for any mother who takes a child to the pool this summer: "Don’t take your eye off 'em," she said.
She continued, "If you walk away, they walk away with you. That was my mistake. I left him playing with other kids on the playground, thinking he would be OK."