7-year-old's quick thinking saves aunt's life

OCEAN CITY, Md. -- Jenny Mama thought she was living her last moments.

Likely, she would've been right, if not for her young nephew, Mason.

Mason Farr had watched his Aunt Jenny tubing down the water slide.

She splashed into the pool. Farr was at the bottom of the slide — he'd just had his turn — waiting for his aunt to come up for air.

But she didn't.

Even at age 7, Farr knew something was very wrong.

He reached down, and he pulled her head above water.

It was a lifesaving decision, it turns out.

"She was drowning really bad, and I felt bad for her," Farr said. "So that's why I jumped in and saved her life."

For his heroics, the rising second-grader on Monday, Aug. 17, was named fire chief for the day by the Ocean City Fire Department.

"He (was) aware of the situation around him and knew she was in distress and acted upon (it) and knew he had to do something," said Lt. Darrick Elliott of the Ocean City Fire Department, who was in the ambulance-on-call the day of the incident.

"He knew the right things to do," Elliot said.

His aunt agrees. Without her nephew's quick thinking, Mama is certain she would've died on the pool floor that day, she says.

The freak accident happened May 25 on the family's vacation in the resort town.

Farr had just gone down the slide, and his aunt was next.

But, somehow, Mama lost control of her tube as she hurtled down. Her spinal cord was damaged.

When she landed at the foot of the slide, she realized she'd lost feeling and control of her limbs. She was lying helpless at the bottom of the pool.

Mama thought she was living her last moments.

"The only thing I was thinking was how many gulps until (I) die," she said. "I took five."

She had no idea she would live and recover. She had no idea her saving grace would be her own young nephew.

"I just was grateful that he got me," Mama said. "I was surprised. I thought I was going to die."

Lifeguards and emergency responders soon arrived. Mama was hospitalized for five weeks, but she is now able to walk on her own.

Mama is grateful for the efforts of first-responders as well as her for her nephew.

"I said thank you with all my heart for showing up, doing the right thing and being there," she said about the paramedics. "Had they made one mistake, I'd be a goner."

The fire company wanted to show its appreciation for the real first responder that day – the boy who saved his aunt's life.

Along with being chief for the day, Mason toured the fire department headquarters. He sat in the driver's seat of a firetruck and at the desk of Chief Chris Lamore, as well as inside the bay of the ambulance which transported Mama to a helicopter.

"He's in his element," said his mother, Karen Turner.

Farr inspected the pole first responders slide down to get to their vehicles on the ground, but he was not allowed to use it.

Someday, when he's a firefighter, he's going to slide down that pole though.

"It looks pretty fun," he said.

Turner said the near-tragedy at the water park was just another example of her son doing the right thing.

"He recognized something was wrong and he did what was right," she said.

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