CHARLOTTE COUNTY, Fla. — A deputy helped save a young child after he saw a motorcycle crash into a vehicle earlier this month in Charlotte County, Florida.
The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office said Deputy Sgt. Dave Musgrove was traveling in Englewood on Feb. 8 just after 7:30 p.m. when he noticed that a motorcycle speeding past him. It was believed that the motorcycle was going over 100 mph.
A few moments later, the motorcycle crashed with a vehicle, WWSB reported.
Musgrove went to the scene and found the motorcycle on the ground, the news outlet reported. The sheriff’s office said that the motorcyclist appeared to have gone through the rear window on the driver’s side of the vehicle.
Musgrove went to check on the occupants of the vehicle and could hear the driver yelling to help her children. He immediately ran around the car. He opened the back passenger door, found a young child and took them out of her booster seat.
“I remember looking to my left and I just see him and a big, bright light and a crash and my ear was ringing. All I could hear was Ariel, my daughter screaming,” said Kayleigh Foley, the child’s mother, according to WFLA.
The driver told Musgrove that there was another child in the car as well.
“As I started removing her, she starts saying: ‘No, my other baby, my other baby.’ I didn’t see a baby to begin with, but then I looked underneath a motorcycle helmet and a body, and I saw another baby underneath,” Musgrove said, according to the news outlet.
Musgrove got a person in the area to hold Ariel as he went to look for the second child. That was when he found a baby seat under the dead motorcyclist, the sheriff’s office said. The baby appeared to him to be unconscious.
“At this time, some bystanders approached and helped to move the motorcyclist off of the infant and cut the seat belt so that Sgt. Musgrove could remove the car seat and check on the baby,” the sheriff’s office said. The baby appeared to have no pulse and was not breathing.
“She was lifeless, I checked for a pulse, I didn’t feel a pulse,” Musgrove said, according to WFLA. He performed CPR on the child, 6-month-old Lola, until emergency medical services arrived. He then felt her take a breath.
“Because of officer Dave Musgrove, she’s still here,” said Lisa Foley, the baby’s grandmother, according to the news outlet.
“He’s our hero,” Kayleigh Foley said.
“He is. He will forever be our hero,” Lisa Foley said. “And undying gratitude from every person in our family. We will never repay him for what he did, because what he did for us was life-changing.”
“The actions of Sgt. Musgrove are to be commended. His poise and calm demeanor in a scene of chaos and tragedy ultimately saved the life of a beautiful child. I want to thank the bystanders who came to his aid as well, allowing him to focus on the immediate need of the baby. This was a senseless accident that resulted in a life lost, but it would have been two lives had Dave not been there. Still, I offer my thoughts and prayers to the friends and family of the motorcyclist and I ask that you keep this mother and her children in your prayers,” Sheriff Bill Prummell said.
Lola remains in a medically induced coma at the hospital, WFLA reported.
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