Employees at Car Dealership Save Life of 2-Month-Old Baby After She Goes into Cardiac Arrest
A 2-month-old baby girl from Kansas is alive and recovering after a frightening brush with death when she suddenly went into cardiac arrest in late March.
Baby Oakley was with her mother, Courtney Gentry, at the Briggs Kia dealership in Topeka, Kansas.
Gentry took her baby into the car to feed her while her fiancé, Jake Rosebrough, finished up the paperwork on a vehicle purchase.
After placing Oakley into her car seat, Gentry sat down in the driver’s seat. Suddenly, she heard strange gurgling sounds coming from Oakley’s tiny body.
Gentry checked on her newborn and was horrified to see that Oakley’s face was turning purple and that her baby could not breathe.
UNEXPECTED HEROES: When this 2-month-old baby went into cardiac arrest, employees at a car dealership sprung into action — and saved her life ? https://t.co/A2d1Q3uwlI pic.twitter.com/dxfCvBaK4V
— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 6, 2019
Josh Kennedy, a salesperson at the Kia dealership, remembered the moment that Gentry ran inside, panicked.
“The mother came running inside screaming, ‘My baby, my baby!’ And natural instinct just kinda hopped in,” Kennedy told WIBW-TV.
The receptionist, Kegann Gideon, laid baby Oakley down on a table and Kennedy immediately started performing CPR.
“She was not breathing,” he said. “And there wasn’t a pulse either.”
It’s a miraculous story of being in the right place at the right time.https://t.co/e4xG5e7hMb
— WIBW (@wibw) April 6, 2019
Gideon said she continually checked on the baby’s pulse and prayed nonstop that the baby would be OK.
Meanwhile, Gentry felt helpless as she wondered what was causing her baby’s sudden medical crisis.
“All I kept thinking was, ‘I cannot lose her,'” Gentry said.
Oakley was taken to a hospital and underwent a series of tests, according to a GoFundMe campaign set up by Gentry’s father, Doug Gentry.
Eventually, young Oakley was diagnosed with Tachyarrhythmia Ventricular Fibrillation, a rare heart condition that caused her to go into cardiac arrest.
“What they think was going on was she was born with ventricular fibrillation which is V-Fib, and it’s a rare life-threatening heart-rhythm that caused the heart to have a rapid misfiring heartbeat,” Gentry said.
“Her beats could go almost upward of 250 beats-per-minute. She went into cardiac arrest at the dealership.”
Gentry is thankful for the car dealership employees who saved her baby’s life, believing her family was exactly where they needed to be during Oakley’s emergency.
“I couldn’t have been more thankful that we were still there, because if it had been just seconds longer we would’ve been leaving,” Gentry said.
Gentry and those who saved Oakley’s life hope that her story will encourage people to learn CPR to save lives in the future.
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