BodyCam video shows cop providing life-saving CPR for baby
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – An Albuquerque police officer is being credited with saving the life of an infant after APD released lapel camera video of the incident on Tuesday.
It happened around 1 p.m. on May 14 when Officer Martin Smith, a 21-year veteran of APD, was called to a home in the Foothills area.
Smith arrives on scene and can be seen walking to the door of a residence, where he’s met by a woman with 7-month-old baby Karly in her arms. That woman is the baby’s grandmother.
“Is she breathing or no?” Smith asks. “No,” the baby’s mother says, crying off to the side of the video.
“I was thinking my daughter was going to die in my arms that day,” said Alyssia Rios, Karly’s mother, told KRQE on Tuesday.
Smith had made it to the scene before the Albuquerque Fire Department. It’s a testament that police work entails much more than throwing handcuffs around the wrists of bad guys.
“Are paramedics there ma’am?” a dispatcher can be heard saying over speakerphone to the baby’s mother. “There’s an officer here,” the woman replies.
Smith had already gone to work on the child, performing light breath-CPR and rubbing the child’s sternum.
Within minutes, the child comes-to.
“After I gave her the two breaths, her body started responding and started breathing again,” Smith said.
“Hi baby, hi,” Smith says to the child, “How’re you doing? She’s awake.”
Smith continues to give the child medical help.
The baby’s grandmother can be heard saying the child’s father has a history of seizures. Police later confirmed the infant had a seizure that day.
The baby is handed to Officer Smith, who takes her outside where he is met by first responders from AFD.
“She’s breathing now,” Smith says to the woman with AFD, “She wasn’t at first.”
The baby was then taken by AFD to their truck, and was later transported to a local hospital.
According to KRQE-TV the baby is healthy and doing well.
“He did save my daughter’s life,” Rios said. “If it wasn’t for him, who knows where she would’ve been or what would’ve happened. He got there quick. He ran up to my front door and he had her.”
Many are hailing Smith as a hero, but he disagrees:
“No. I just did my job. and I’m glad the baby survived,” he said.
Watch the full Youtube video below: