Officers Nick Greene and Noah Cole of the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky barely had time to settle into their shift on June 27 when a frantic young father approached them.
The two began each shift by visiting local businesses and speaking to the owners, so the two were at a Shorty’s convenience store in Louisville when the man come in saying something was wrong with his baby.
Greene, a father himself, couldn’t understand everything the man was saying — but he caught enough.
“He said my baby’s ‘No bueno,’ so that means, ‘My baby is no good,’” the officer recalled during an interview the department shared. “So we just ran outside and see what [the] situation was that we had, and the mother was in the backseat with the baby.”
As he approached, he could see the situation was indeed dire.
“The baby was in the mother’s hands, and it was lifeless at that point,” Greene said.
“I tried to key up on the radio, I couldn’t key up on the radio, so my partner Cole, he did all the talking on the radio while I, while tried to perform CPR on this baby.”
“I couldn’t talk on the radio, but when I heard the baby come back crying you know I was like, ‘Oh, we got it, we got it.’”
Greene had never been in a position to help such a young baby before, and he said that his heart rate was through the roof. Because of his training, the officer was able to remain composed and focused, but the tense moments before the baby started crying certainly had an effect on him.
“When the baby started screaming and whining, that was like, ‘OK … there’s oxygen getting to the brain, there’s oxygen being, being inside the body,’” he said. “So that was the ultimate sign of relief.”
Thanks to Cole’s quick work, backup soon arrived. EMS checked out the infant, and she was transported to the hospital for further monitoring.
The baby, named Emma, was barely a week old, and the officers don’t know what caused her to stop breathing. According to what the family told the department, though, she is at home again and doing well.
It’s impossible to know if the officers were just in the right place at the right time or if the terrified parents were specifically looking for them, but Greene guesses they must have seen the police cars parked out front of the convenience store and turned in for help.
Both Greene and Cole stressed that this life-saving interaction was just another day on the job.
“When we have our interviews into the police department, I’m pretty sure everybody says, ‘Hey, I want to help somebody,’” Cole said. “And this is just one of the things that we do every day, is we try to help somebody.”
“Nobody can, you know, get us prepared for any day,” Greene said. “You never know what the day’s gonna bring. You never know what’s gonna happen. You just have to be there when you get called.”
