Video shows dramatic rescue of crying Kansas toddler from bottom of narrow, 10-foot hole
Some quick thinking by a police officer in central Kansas saved a 14-month-old boy from the bottom of a narrow pipe in a dramatic rescue that was captured on camera.
First responders who arrived at an emergency scene Sunday afternoon found a crying toddler stuck underground about 10 to 12 feet down the bottom of a 12-inch-wide PVC pipe, the Moundridge Police Department said in a news release on Tuesday.
The parents said they called 911 just before 2 p.m. after realizing their son Bentley had fallen into the hole while he was playing outside his home in Moundridge, about 40 miles northwest of Wichita, according to KSNW-TV.
"Looking down at him as he was screaming, he wanted out of there, he wanted help and you can't do anything. Just complete helplessness," Blake, the boy's father, told the station, though he declined to share his last name. "It's horrifying, it's haunting, to feel so helpless knowing that your child is in serious need of help."
Crying toddler pulled to safety
Dramatic video captured by a police body camera shows the moment rescuers pulled a crying Bentley from the pipe and back to safety.
"Nice and easy," one rescuer says, as another says: "We got an arm, we got an arm."
They then return Bentley back to his parents' frantic arms.
Among those on the scene was Officer Ronnie Wagner of the Moundridge Police Department, who constructed "a makeshift "catch pole" using a smaller PVC pipe and rope," police said. "This creative solution was instrumental in lifting the child safely from the pipe."
Wagner called a nearby paramedic who had a thin, long piece of PVC pipe, which the officer used to create the catch pole, which is commonly used by animal control officers.
"I threaded some rope through some PVC pipe and tied a knot at the end of it … and we used it to wrap around the child basically under his shoulders here and lift him out of the hole," Wagner told KSNW-TV.
Once the catch pole was created, first responders lowered the end of the pole into the hole and got the rope around Bentley's body and pulled him to safety.
"We are relieved to report that the child, while understandably shaken, was unharmed," the department said. Police thanked "all the first responders for their swift and effective action, which transformed a dangerous situation into a successful rescue."
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