Riverside Officer Credited with Saving Non-Breathing Infant's Life

A Riverside police officer was credited for saving the life of an 8-month-old girl this weekend when she removed a plastic bottle cap lodged deep in the infant's throat, a lieutenant said.

Officer Janet Ramos was on her way to another call Saturday when she was flagged down by a frantic woman hold the child who was not breathing in the 4300 block of Central Avenue. The child was turning blue because of a lack of oxygen, according to Riverside police Lt. Russ Shubert.

The look on the woman's face was one of sheer "terror," Ramos told City News Service.

"She was in total panic mode," Ramos said.

Ramos, who was unaware of a 911 call at 12:14 p.m. to firefighters, pulled her patrol car over, rushed to the mother and grabbed hold of the baby girl to check what was wrong. She spotted the bottle cap in the child's throat and tried clearing the blockage by slapping the child on the back, but to no use, Shubert said.

Ramos then plucked the cap out with her fingers, which allowed the child to breathe again. The sound of the baby's crying was music to Ramos' ears.

"I was relieved," said Ramos, a two-year member of the Riverside Police Department and an Army medic in the Iraq War in 2003. "It was an amazing feeling knowing the baby was breathing again."

The infant was taken to a hospital for treatment and later released.

As the mother of an 8-year-old daughter, Ramos, 33, said she related to how the woman felt in knowing her child survived a precarious moment. It was the first time Ramos ever did something like this, she said.

Ramos' heroic deed was not lost on her colleagues, as Shubert called her actions "commendable, a credit to the department, (who) most certainly saved this infant's life."

"I was glad I was there," Ramos said.

—City News Service.