By the Daily Post staff
A 13-year-old girl was rushed to Stanford Hospital on Friday (June 28) when she nearly drowned after completing a swimming race at Burgess Pool in Menlo Park, according to the Menlo Park Fire Protection District.
Bystanders reported that the girl had just finished a race when she seemed to collapse and sink to the bottom of the pool, according to Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman.
An off-duty fire captain-paramedic, Eric McGlennon, and others noticed the girl slip below the surface. They immediately dove into the pool and brought her to the surface and started CPR, Schapelhouman said.
McGlennon happened to be at the pool because his own child was involved in the swim meet.
When they pulled the girl out of the pool, she had no pulse and wasn’t breathing, according to Schapelhouman.
Fire paramedics arrived at 4:47 p.m. and took over CPR and used other techniques, including defibrillation, before she was put on an ambulance and rushed to the hospital.
Schapelhouman said that the girl will have a “fighting chance for survival. Time will tell.”
This was the second pool incident Menlo Park firefighters have responded to in recent weeks. On May 23, a 3-year-old girl drowned in a backyard pool in Atherton.
