BANGOR, Maine — A 6-year-old Brewer girl who was playing along the edge of the pool at the Fairfield Inn and Suites on New Year’s Eve quietly slipped into the water without anyone nearby noticing.
That was until 5-year-old Brianna Davis saw the girl on the bottom of the pool and alerted her dad.
“She said, ‘Daddy, is that little girl supposed to be swimming like that or is she drowning?’” Scott Davis said Tuesday in a phone interview from his Canaan garage, S&S Auto Sales & Service.
Davis, his wife, Lola, the couple’s three daughters and one of his children’s friends were at the pool, as was the family of Bangor residents Sandra and Wayne Robbins. The father and friends of the Brewer girl also were at the pool.
Sandra Robbins, who was in the pool holding her 2-year-old grandson, said she was alerted to the girl in trouble when she heard Lola Davis yell something about “something being in the pool.”
“I turned my head and said, ‘Oh my God, it’s a little girl,’” Robbins recalled Tuesday.
Robbins made her way to the girl, who was under about 4 feet of water, and, while still holding on to her grandson, used her foot to get the girl to the surface. The youngster’s body was purple and her eyes were bulged out, according to Sandra and her husband, who said they both feared the worst.
“If you had seen that little girl you would never believe the way it turned out,” Wayne Robbins said.
Once the girl was on the side of the pool, Scott and Lola Davis, who works as an X-ray technician at Eastern Maine Medical Center and had gone through CPR training two months ago, went into action. Lola Davis felt for a pulse and didn’t find any.
“I tried giving her some breaths, but that didn’t seem to work,” Scott Davis said. “It was so frightening. It was like holding one of your little girls.”
His wife began doing chest compressions. After the second set of compressions, “she kind of puked up some water and started to breathe,” Scott Davis said of the little girl. “The father was panicked, as I would have been if it was my little one.”
Assistant Fire Chief Daryl Cyr said emergency medical personnel, who were dispatched to the motel at 9:38 p.m., arrived at 9:43 p.m., provided advanced life support and transported the patient to the hospital.
Cyr said he could release no other details about the ambulance call for privacy reasons.
Sgt. Tim Cotton said officers gave both Sandra Robbins and Lola Davis challenge coins for taking action to save the girl’s life.
The father of the little girl called the Davises on Monday to say his daughter had been just been released from the hospital and was doing fine. Attempts to reach him on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
“He said she’s all smiles and happy-go-lucky,” Scott Davis said.
A total of 31 people in Maine died by drowning during 2016, according to unofficial data tallied by the medical examiner’s office.
“These include a bathtub drowning as well as people who fell or collapsed head first into a puddle,” Mark Belserene, spokesman for the medical examiner, said in a Tuesday email.
A total of 45 people died in 2015 and 20 died in 2014, he said.
Both the Davises and Robbins are thankful that the 6-year-old from Brewer was not added to that tally on the last day of the year.
“They reviewed the tape at the hotel and said she had been going around the edge of the pool and probably got tired and her hand slipped,” Davis said of how the girl ended up on the bottom of the pool.
Drownings are often quick and quiet, according to the Dangerous Water 2016 report by Safe Kids USA, a national network of organizations working to prevent unintentional childhood injury. The report states a parent or caregiver claimed to be present and supervising the children in roughly nine out of 10 cases in which a child died from drowning.
“Unlike the scenes played out in movies, drowning children may not scream, wave their arms or call for help,” the report states. “Instead, they slip silently under the water, in some cases even as caregivers and lifeguards look on.”
The report goes on to say that “irreversible brain damage may occur within a mere five minutes” and that “the longer a child is submerged under the water, the more likely they are to suffer poor outcomes.”
The time between her last being seen on video and the actions to save her life was less than two minutes, said Sandra Robbins, who viewed the hotel’s tape several different times.
The Bangor Daily News requested to see the tape but was denied access by hotel management, who cited customer privacy.
“It’s really a miracle baby,” Sandra Robbins said.