Heart-Stopping Moment Dad Saves Baby From Choking Caught on Camera

Two outdoor security cameras captured the dramatic moment a dad rushed inside his home to save his choking baby.

In footage supplied to Newsweek by Ring, Ryan DiRoma, who lives with his family in Phoenix, Arizona, can be seen rushing to answer his wife Kalin's calls for help. Their infant daughter, Blake, had begun to choke on a piece of carrot stuck in her throat.

According to statistics compiled by the New York State Department of Health, choking is the fourth leading cause of unintentional death in children under the age of 5. It's estimated that, in the U.S., one child dies from choking on food every five days. More than 12,000 a year are admitted to hospital emergency rooms with food-choking injuries.

In this instance, however, tragedy was averted, thanks to Ryan's training from a previous job as a lifeguard. On the video, he can be seen rushing into the house at lightning speed when his wife explains what is happening.

After a few tense moments, Blake can be heard crying on the clip, with Ryan taking her outside so they could both catch their breath.

He told Ring: "My wife was feeding my daughter dinner. She noticed she was having difficulty breathing, and began hitting her back to dislodge the carrot. After several unsuccessful attempts, she rushed to the backdoor to call me for help."

As he headed inside, Ryan said he began to recall the CPR training he has received as a teenage lifeguard. "I remembered the technique of holding the baby downwards, and hitting her back firmly to dislodge the object," he added.

When Ryan later realized the entire incident would have been caught on the couple's Ring security cameras, he decided to watch the footage back. He says that it was an "unsettling" experience.

Despite coming to her rescue, both Ryan and his wife feel fortunate that things played out the way they did. "We were very grateful our daughter was OK, but not neglectful of how much worse it could have been if we didn't act swiftly," he said.

This is not the first time heroics of these kind have been caught on camera.

In October 2021, dramatic dashcam footage documented the moment a Florida Highway Patrol trooper rescued a baby girl who was choking by the side of a busy road.

In December that year, a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer in New Jersey was hailed as a hero after saving another choking baby.

Another dashcam video from the patrol car of a Santa Fe County Sheriff's deputy also went viral in June 2021 after the officer saved the life of a 1-year-old girl who was choking on a Cheeto.