TROPHY CLUB — Five first responders were given a special lifesaving award during a recent Trophy Club Town Council meeting for saving the life of a 2-year-old boy who had fallen into his family’s swimming pool.
Among a packed council chamber March 4 was 2-year-old Devin Peters, the little boy whose life they saved in January.“It’s all too often police and fire handle these calls with a tragic endings,” Fire Chief Danny Thomas said. “Tonight is not one of those.”Thomas said dispatchers received the call Jan 9 from a hysterical father saying his son had fallen into the pool.“They got him out, he wasn’t breathing and he was blue,” he said.Thomas said dispatchers walked Devin’s father, Chase Peters, through the CPR process while emergency personnel were on the way.Officer Barry Sullivan, the first to arrive on the scene, began CPR and was soon joined by Sgt. Jim Norcross. Fire Lt. Shane Beck, Fire Engineer Shawn Garrett and Firefighter Matthew Tackett arrived a few minutes later and began advanced CPR techniques.“After working on Devin for seven minutes, with no pulse or respiration, they got a very weak pulse back,” Thomas said. “This is teamwork at its best, you can’t get any better.”Thomas said an ambulance crew from Westlake arrived and transported Devin to Baylor Regional Medical Center at Grapevine. He was later transferred to Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth.Trophy Club Police and Fire Chaplain Joel Quile was called to the Peters home to give comfort and support to the family.Quile said he arrived to find a horrible scene. Devin’s parents were sopping wet and first responders looked pale.Quile said he is “supposed to be a man of faith.” But after hearing how long Devin was without a pulse, Quile said he had little faith the boy would survive.“I asked (the family) if they were people of faith and they gave me a good answer,” he said.Quile continued to give the family support throughout Devin’s recovery, which would take weeks. The toddler finally returned home Feb. 13.“It was an honor to walk with the family through that brief journey,” Quile said. “And as I was hanging out with Devin today, I just thought, never again will I have so little faith.”Police Chief Scott Kniffen said emergency personnel train for these types of events that hope they never happen.“We hope we never have to use our firearms in the line of duty, we hope we never have to go to that heinous crime scene and we hope we never have to perform CPR on a child,” Kniffen said. “When one of these situations arrives, we revert to the training we have received ... This was not a traffic stop, they reverted to their training and their training paid off.”Devin’s dad, Chase Peters, said it is hard to find the right words to say to the ones who saved his little boy.“You can’t really express it to the ones who saved your child’s life, its beyond gratitude,” he said. “Glory be to god, he made it because of everybody here.”Susan McFarland, 817-390-7547 Twitter: @susanmcfarland1
