Toddler meets officer who saved his life
Published 1:31 pm Monday, February 27, 2017
- Sawyer White, 10 months, reaches for Lt. Rocky Hancock of the Moultrie Police Department during a touching reunion Friday, along with Sawyer's mother, Kacee Hartsfield. Smith was only 7 weeks old when he stopped breathing while at Roses Department Store. Hancock was the first to respond to the call and cleared the baby's airway.
MOULTRIE, Ga. — There’s no doubt that Sawyer White’s Friday encounter with police was much more pleasant than his first one eight months ago.
No, the boy, who’s now 10 months old, wasn’t cuffed and taken downtown that day by Moultrie Police Department Lt. Rocky Hancock. On that occasion the veteran Moultrie officer was the first to arrive at a medical emergency involving him when he was only 7 weeks old.
On Wednesday White’s mom, Kacee Hartsfield, shared a photo on Facebook which then made its way onto the department’s Facebook page where, as of mid-afternoon Friday, 20,398 people had viewed it. More than 115 people shared the photo.
“They called us to Roses because he was choking,” said Hancock, who has been with the department for eight years. “I got his airway cleared up and got him breathing.”
The infant had not shown any signs of illness prior to the incident, Hartsfield said. At Colquitt Regional Medical Center’s emergency room doctors told her that a buildup of mucus caused the episode.
“It saved his life,” she said of Hancock’s actions that day. “That’s why I wanted to bring him by, to see the man responsible for him being here today. He’s our angel.”
Hancock said it was not the first time his job has put him in a position to save a life. When a truck hauling chickens overturned several years ago on North Main Street, he climbed inside and held up the driver, who was hanging from his seat belt, until other emergency workers broke a window and removed him from the semi.
“This is the first infant, the first child,” said Hancock, who is in the process of adopting his second child with wife April Hancock, a prosecutor with the Colquitt County District Attorney’s Office. “Sawyer has definitely affected my life a lot.”
Hancock, who served in the U.S. Air Force prior to beginning his law enforcement career, has taken a first-responder course for law enforcement officers that covered basic medical skills.
“It’s really good when you have a situation that impacts you as much as it does somebody else,” he said. “Now, to see him (White) happy and just being a normal kid, it brings you back to the essence of what it is to be a police officer.”
