Long Branch Police Officer In The Right Place At The Right Time

It took Long Branch Patrolman Omar Akel less than a minute to make it to Yuri Sandoval and Erasmo Diaz’s Lippincott Avenue home after a frantic call that their baby girl was choking, according to app.com.

Akel was at nearby police headquarters when the call came in around noon on Friday.

When he and his partner Patrick Viccaro arrived at the family’s home, little Melanie Diaz already had a bluish tint to her skin and was not making any noise, he said.

“I took the baby, put her face in my hand and her belly along my forearm,’’ said Akel, who was an emergency medical technician before he joined the police force in 2015.

“I delivered five back thrusts,“ he said. “After the fifth one, I heard her starting to cry. Once I heard the baby screaming and crying, I knew that couldn’t happen without a clear airway.’’

When the baby began choking on a candy wrapper, Sandoval tried but could not dissolve it. That’s when they called police.

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Photo credit: Long Branch Police Department.