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7-year-old revived after choking on food at Boston school

E-mail|Link December 23, 2009 05:20 PM

By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff

A 7-year-old boy was rescued by school nurses and Boston Emergency Medical Services technicians after he apparently began choking on food earlier today, police said.

Just after noon, the boy, a second-grader whose name was not released, was celebrating at a holiday party with his classmates at the Josiah Quincy Elementary School in Boston, said Matthew Wilder, spokesman for the Boston public schools.

Suddenly, he became unresponsive and went into cardiac arrest, Wilder said. It is unclear what triggered the problem.

School nurses immediately rushed to the classroom where the party was taking place and began performing CPR on the boy, Wilder said. They also used a defibrillator.

Three minutes later, emergency medical technicians arrived and found the boy was not breathing and had no pulse. Paramedics arrived on the scene a few minutes later.

Emergency workers managed to revive the child, but he was not breathing on his own when they transported him across the street to Tufts Medical Center, according to emergency officials.

"The school nurse really should be praised," said Jennifer Mehigan, spokeswoman for Boston Emergency Medical Services. "Those quick actions are really what save someone's life."

The boy's condition was not immediately available.