A New Mexico State Police officer is being hailed as a hero after he helped an infant struggling to breathe after being born in a car.
On July 24, Officer Ismael Perez tried to conduct a traffic stop in Deming, New Mexico. “I saw a car run the red light. So when I went to pull it over, I pulled into the hospital,” Perez told KOAT. “I could hear over the radio they were mentioning something on the police radio about them needing an escort.”
The man driving the car, Miguel Covarrubias, had already called 911 in distress. His wife had given birth in the vehicle on their way to the hospital, and their newborn baby wasn’t breathing. As he pulled into the hospital parking lot, Covarrubias quickly alerted Perez to what was going on.
“I thought it was a toddler. From what I could hear on the radio, it sounded like a toddler. So in my mind at all, a toddler was choking on something,” Perez said. “As soon as I opened the door, I see a newborn baby on the seat lying there motionless. It kind of threw me off for a slight second,” he added.
Perez started gently tapping the child’s back to get him to start breathing. The entire interaction was captured by his bodycam and shared on the New Mexico State Police Facebook page.
“I have three kids of my own, so I’ve seen the doctors do that with my daughters because they came out of the womb the same way and no crying or anything. So I did the same thing,” Perez explained.
Thanks to Perez’s quick actions, the boy, Miguel Jr., started crying. Hospital staff quickly arrived to help both mother and baby.
Covarrubias praised Perez for helping his family. “It was like a sense of relief, you know, because I knew someone that knew what they were doing was helping,” Covarrubias said. “To me, in my eyes, he’s a hero. He helped me in what I would say was one of the scariest moments in my life.”
He also thanked God that everything turned out well, as both mother and baby are healthy and have been released from the hospital. “It lined up perfectly to where everything turned out OK. So it was and is by the grace of God.”
