Sp. Fork first-grade hero saves classmate whose heart stopped .

Hilary M. Hendricks - Correspondent | Posted: Saturday, October 15, 2011 12:35 am Read more: http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/south/spanish-fork/article_fd165552-77f0-5d27-aee7-4af4b21949ac.html#ixzz1cBRt9qML

SPANISH FORK -- One minute he was playing with his friends at the start of PE class. The next minute, 6-year-old Logan Powell was lying unconscious and his friend was running to the teacher for help. Powell's heart and breathing had stopped.

Hallie Witt, also age 6, said her class was playing steal the flag outside when she noticed Powell lying face down on the grass. "So then I checked on him. When I rolled him over he did a gasp and I saw purple lips and slobber."

Witt knew to look for purple lips because her mom Katrina Witt had been ill over the summer and showed her daughters how to call for help should her oxygen levels drop.

Asking another friend to stay with Powell, Witt ran to the PE teacher.

"I grabbed onto her arm and I shaked her," Witt remembered. "I knew that would work because I do it to my mom a lot. I said, 'Logan's lying down on the floor and he's fainting.' "

Minutes later, Witt and her classmates were shepherded back inside the school. But their teacher, Jennifer Jolley, Powell's aunt, allowed Witt to stand by the window and watch the police and medical team arrive.

"I didn't think he would be OK," Witt said.

Lt. Steve Adams of the Spanish Fork Police Department said the 9-1-1 call from East Meadows Elementary School came at 11:30 a.m. Thursday. "There were officers already in the area, and the first arrived at the two-minute mark," about half the time an emergency response usually takes, Adams said.

The officer found three to four school personnel surrounding the boy on the grass. Two secretaries had begun CPR, according to school personnel.

Three minutes after the 9-1-1 call, another officer arrived with an automated external defibrillator, a medical device that can diagnose heart malfunction and shock the heart back into rhythm.

"The AED confirmed that a shock was needed, so that was administered," Adams said. "The officers then continued CPR until the highly trained ambulance personnel arrived."

Powell was transported first to Mountain View Hospital in Payson and then by helicopter to Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Doctors diagnosed him with Long QT syndrome, a genetic condition in which the heart races and then stops.

Powell's mother Laura Powell said that "before he leaves the hospital, he will have a tiny defibrillator placed in his chest. That will get his heart started right away if it stops again." Testing is underway to determine if his six siblings may have the condition as well.

Laura Powell said the doctors believe her son was not out of oxygen for very long because he's "improved so much faster than anyone expected." Although still in the pediatric intensive care unit, as of Friday night Powell was "talking, looking around, imagining" and the ventilator had been removed, said Laura Powell. "He's going to live and be fine."

To Powell's parents, the timing of the incident was "absolutely amazing," Laura Powell said. "If he had been playing in his room at home or asleep in the middle of the night when his heart stopped, we would have lost him."

The family credits Witt, as well as school and emergency personnel and the AED, with saving their son's life. "He's here because Hallie knew what to do," Laura Powell said. "She is truly a hero."

Lana Hiskey, spokeswoman for Nebo School District, said, "We are thrilled with how well our staff and the emergency personnel responded." Adams said of the rescue effort, "We're so grateful to arrive on a scene where people there are doing the right thing. The staff at East Meadows were appropriately dealing with the young man. From the location of the responding officers and the AED to the great service of the medical personnel, so many things were right in line to make this a perfect outcome."

Given the importance of immediate AED administration for victims of heart failure, last month the Nebo School District board approved funding for an AED in every school, with more than one in each high school. District personnel tested AED models to ensure the design they purchased would be optimally user friendly, Hiskey said. "You open the package and audio instructions tell you just what to do."

Laura Powell said that her son's experience has helped the school district make distributing the devices a priority, as well as training to go with them. "This can potentially save someone else's life, too," she said.

To read more about efforts to bring defibrillator awareness and training to communities, visit http://www.sads.org.

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