Officer on Patrol Feels Need to Drive Down Street, Finds Unresponsive Child Who 'Got Ahold of Fentanyl'
Sometimes we feel compelled to do things for seemingly no reason. Whether it’s reaching out to someone, doing something a little out of the ordinary, or making a simple choice in a different way, those seemingly random decisions can make all the difference.
For Officer Aaron Khamosh with the Concord Police Department in California, that came in the form of taking a different route back to the department for his dinner break on March 26.
He just felt like taking a different path than usual — but soon, he was grateful for that choice.
It was around 9:30 p.m. as the 27-year-old was headed to the station when he noticed a car driving erratically. The driver was frantically trying to get his attention, and Khamosh told the East Bay Times that based on the driver’s behavior, he thought he might be about to help deliver a baby.
But it was much worse. As Khamosh got to the car, he saw a 2-year-old girl unresponsive in the back seat. She wasn’t breathing.
He immediately began CPR, but it wasn’t helping. He couldn’t find a pulse, and she was growing paler by the second.
Then the mother of the child dropped the bomb: she told the officer the toddler needed some Narcan because the child “got ahold of fentanyl.”
“It was almost like time kind of froze in my head,” Khamosh later explained. “It was like there was nothing else around me. No other noise. It was like extreme tunnel vision.
“It was like my mind was going 1,000 mph but it was very orderly and my body was calm. I just knew I had to bring that baby back. And that’s really all that there was for me, at that time. It was sort of out-of-body.”
Knowing what the real cause of the toddler’s state was, Khamosh was able to handle the situation effectively.
“Officer Khamosh administered two doses of Narcan and continued CPR,” the Concord Police Department posted on March 29. “The baby started breathing and thankfully gained consciousness. Contra Costa County Fire Protection District and medics arrived and transported the baby to John Muir Health, Concord Medical Center.
“The 2-year-old is now recovering at Children’s Hospital Oakland and is under the care of Child and Family Services.”
The girl is doing well and her mother has been charged with felony child abuse.
“We are grateful the baby will survive this ordeal and for Officer Khamosh’s quick thinking,” the department’s post continued. “A reminder to our community, that Fentanyl is an extremely dangerous and potent opioid.”
Had Khamosh not followed the whim to go a different way, the story could have ended very differently.
“I just thought, ‘Why not go a different way?'” he said. “For whatever reason, I just felt the need to change it up.”
But now we know the reason, and he knows that because of that decision, a “2-year-old girl has a chance at life. She had seconds. Seconds.”
“I think about her all the time. All the time.”
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