Nine-year-old boy gives chest compressions to keep girl breathing

Justin Felton was playing football with friends at Parkwood Manor in Van Buren Township and was about to make a block when he saw the girl fall off her bike.
Justin, age 9, knew the 11-year-old girl called “Ma-rye-a” who was visiting the neighborhood and she had shown him her medi-pac around her waist where she carries all her supplies. She told him she has heart problems and, that day, told him she forgot to put her Epi pen in the pac.
He said he ran over to her and asked her if she was OK and she said she couldn’t breathe.
Justin said he rolled her over and started doing chest compressions to help her breathe. He yelled to his friend Mark, 12, to go tell the girl’s mother what was happening and to call 911.
Mark ran off and Justin did the compressions, with his hands locked together, 30 times and then a rest, just as he had been taught. Then another series of 30.
Justin had learned chest compressions at Tyler Elementary School, where he was a student, and from his mother, NKeisha Felton, who has been a medical assistant since May at the University of Michigan, where she gives pre- and post-anesthesia care to children.
Justin said Ma-rye-a had told him her heart was hurting and she wasn’t able to catch her breath. He said it was like her nose was stuffed up and then he heard a little air coming out her nose as compressions continued.
When Huron Valley Ambulance came, “I backed up for them to put her in the truck,” Justin said. “My arms were hurting.”
He said while he was doing the compressions no one offered to take a turn to help and he thought maybe they didn’t know how.
He said the ambulance crew didn’t say anything to him as he stepped back to make way for them.
His mother has tried to find out how the girl is doing, but all she could find out was that she was still in the hospital as of July 4.
Justin, who will turn 10 on Aug. 15, has lived in the Belleville area since he was two. He attended Bethany Daycare, Savage Elementary, Wick Elementary for a short time, and then Tyler. This fall he will be a fifth-grader at Owen Intermediate School.
Justin wants to be a scientist and is a good student, his mother said. He likes to fix things and to stir up concoctions. They made some slime the other day, she said.
Justin has an older brother, Kai’yon Morton, 14, who will be attending Belleville High School this fall. He likes to play football, too.
NKeisha said this is the third year for her, her two sons, and her mother to be living together in the townhouse at Parkwood.