Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris helps save drowning 3-year-old in Las Vegas
Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris played the ultimate defense in a Las Vegas pool over the weekend.
Morris, 46, helped save a 3-year-old from drowning at Wynn Encore while he was vacationing there with his family, elaborating on the scary scene to ESPN on Wednesday.
When the child was taken out of the pool, he didn’t have a pulse – and when a lifeguard started performing CPR, Morris rushed into action.
“I saw people calling 911 so my first question was, where is the AED?” Morris told ESPN, referring to an automated external defibrillator, an electronic device used to revive someone who goes into cardiac arrest.
“When I got back, we had a doctor on site that was able to start the compressions. I was able to hand the AED to him, get it open for him, put the pads on the child, and he ended up being OK.”
Morris said he knew about AEDs thanks to a training given by the team’s head of sports medicine – and that teams are educating their players and staff on the importance of the devices following Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s on-field cardiac arrest in January.
Hamlin collapsed on the field during the Bills’ game against the Bengals in Week 17 of the 2022 season after his heart stopped, and he has credited the use of an AED for helping to revive him.
Since then, Hamlin has become an advocate for AED access, recently speaking on Capitol Hill in support of a bill that would increase the number of devices in schools.
Morris credited Hamlin as a reason he was able to react so quickly to the scene in Vegas.
“I’m just thankful I knew what to do,” Morris said. “You just never know when you’re going to need that stuff.”
According to an Instagram post from Morris’ wife, Nicole, the boy was released from the hospital the next day.
