ASHLAND, Maine — It was a typical summer day for Pamela Bennett of Ashland, as she moved around her kitchen on July 29, putting away lunch dishes while her 6-year-old autistic son, Hunter Whipple, stood behind her, drinking a glass of water.
Just seconds later, she heard a terrible scream, turned around, and saw that same little boy in the swimming pool, with his 9-year-old brother, Blake Vincent, desperately cradling his head to keep it above water.
“It was the worst thing I ever saw,” Bennett said Thursday. “I jumped in the pool and got him out and started to resuscitate him, and Blake got out of the pool and ran into the house to call 911.”
Just by coincidence, Vincent had left his friend’s house early to come home that afternoon. By doing so, his mother said, he saved his brother’s life.
“When I pulled him out of the pool, I thought he was lifeless,” Bennett said. “But when I started to resuscitate him, he just vomited all over me and started to breathe.”
Members of the Ashland Ambulance Department responded to the call and told Bennett that Hunter did not need to be transported to the hospital, she said. She took him to the doctor for a follow-up appointment, and she was told that he did not suffer any ill effects.
“I could not believe that Blake was able to get Hunter like he did,” she said. “Blake is really only 10 pounds heavier than Hunter. But he was holding his head up and screaming for me. He was his hero.”
“I was frightened when I saw him like that,” Vincent said Thursday, recalling seeing his brother face down hitting the sides of the pool. The 9-year-old said that it was just instinct to jump in and save his brother and then to call 911. He said that the first responders who arrived at the scene were praising him and telling him he had “done a good job” that day.
Bennet said that Hunter is “obsessed” with getting out, so the family home is secured with gates and padlocks on doors. That day, however, Bennett said someone did not close a side door securely, and whoever used the pool last did not shut the gate, which has a padlock on it.
That is how Hunter slipped out of the kitchen and into the pool.
Hunter also is developmentally delayed, Bennett said, and pool therapy is a significant part of his treatment. She said Thursday that the 6-year-old has “extremely tight muscles,” and water helps improve sensory input.
“We are in the pool all the time,” she said. “He is obsessed with water. He will sit in the bathtub for hours if you let him.”
Children with autism are often attracted to water sources such as pools, ponds and lakes, according to the organization Autism Speaks. Drowning is a leading cause of death for a child or adult who has autism.
Bennett said that Hunter was so intent on going in the pool that day that even after she pulled him out of the water and was trying to strip his wet clothes off of him, he was fighting her to get back in.
“He was mad at me,” she said. “He was upset that I was bringing him in the house to change his clothes. He did not realize what had really happened.”
Bennett decided to immediately drain the pool and will be driving Hunter to a friend’s pool or to the pool at the University of Maine at Presque Isle to receive his therapy.
Vincent said he is a little upset that the pool had to be drained, but added he understands the reason behind it. He said it is sometimes difficult to have a sibling with autism, but that he is very close to his little brother.
“I like to push him on the swing and pull him around in his wagon,” he said Thursday. “We play a lot together.”
Bennett said that her already close family is even more tight-knit now.
“If Blake had come even one minute later, this would be a totally different story,” she said Thursday. “He is my hero.”