Xavier Rigney Wiki
Xavier Rigney Biography
Who is Xavier Rigney ?
A heroic Kansas man sprang into action to resuscitate a drowning autistic boy in an emotional rescue that was caught on camera earlier this month.
Xavier Rigney, 4, who does not speak, ran out of his mother’s Lawrence apartment and figured out how to get into the complex’s gated pool on May 18, according to The Topeka Capital-Journal.
The boy, dressed in a diaper, stepped into the deep end and was immediately completely submerged, security video showed.
He began to reach for something to climb to no avail and quickly became unresponsive.
Father
Neighbor Maddox Westerhaus, 12, saw Xavier underwater and told his father Tom, who jumped over the closed fence and pulled the boy out of the water.
He was submerged for 200 seconds, almost three and a half minutes, according to the article.
Tom Westerhaus, a former lifeguard, performed chest compressions for nearly three minutes until authorities arrived. When Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Battalion Chief Rob Fleeup arrived at the scene, the boy was reported to be awake and breathing.
The actions of the father and son were “one of the most heroic things he had ever witnessed,” Fleeup said at a ceremony Thursday to celebrate the rescue.
“We’re very happy to celebrate this positive outcome,” Fleeup said, “because too often these stories don’t have a positive outcome.”
Mother
The boy’s mother, Alexis Rigney, thanked her neighbors during the event at the Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Administrative Offices.
She told reporters that she had just left the boy alone for a few seconds to see how her sister was doing when she went into the pool.
“Xavier is my best friend and I don’t know what I would do without him,” Rigney said through tears.
Westerhaus last received CPR training 15 years ago, according to the report.
