On May 9, 2018, Jeremie Nix was heading home after his shift ended as a Marion County Sheriff’s Office K9 deputy when he heard someone causing a lot of commotion.
As he rolled down his window, he learned that a 4-month-old babies life was in danger.
“The first words out of her mouth were, ‘Don’t let my baby die,’” Nix recalled.
Great work: A @MCSOFlorida deputy saves a 3-month-old boy: https://t.co/HDkd0yn0VK pic.twitter.com/nMwmc6GKqg
— WESH 2 News (@WESH) May 10, 2018
The boy was not breathing. Nix began CPR but saw no improvement. That’s when he took things into his own hands and took the child to the emergency room.
Doctors were fianlly able to get the little boy named Kingston breathing again, and both the doctors and Kingston’s mother, Nechole Crowell, credited Nix with saving his life.
He could have left after helping save Kingston’s life, but he wanted to make sure the 4-month-old was OK.
Crowell spoke with the sheriff’s deputy after the incident and let him know that Kingston was “completely healthy.” And that could have been the last time the would ever speak, but it wasn’t.
A few months after Nix helped save Kingston’s life, Crowell had a question for Nix. Would he be Kingston’s godfather?
“Like we were kind of attached from the moment it happened. He just said, ‘I’m not leaving your son, until I know he’s OK’ and it’s just been him and Nikki since,” Crowell told WESH 2 News.
Nix and his wife Nikki have hosted Kingston at their home numerous times since, including on Christmas.
Jeremie said their chance meeting has allowed him to form relationships that he otherwise wouldn’t have made.
“It doesn’t have to be blood related to be family and it doesn’t have to be just your family to teach life lessons,” Crowell, who is a single mother working full time and earning her nursing degree, said. “And so he has another family that can teach him a lot more and we can all work together. You know, no matter color, race, whatever, it’s just, you see genuine love.”
After saving Kingston’s lives, Jeremie Nix had no duty to maintain in contact with Nechole Crowell. But they were bonded by the life-threatening incident in a way they could not have predicted, and it was difficult for either of them to ignore it.
