Salisbury City Council honors police officer for saving four-week-old’s life

SALISBURY — Salisbury honored one of its police officers during the city council meeting on Tuesday for saving the life of a four-week-old infant.

Police Chief Patrick “P.J.” Smith spoke about the actions that led Officer Kenneth Battle-Hay to be honored with the Salisbury Police Department Lifesaving Award.

“Officer Battle-Hay is always willing to help when needed and it’s not uncommon that when I read the daily summaries at the end of the shift that other officers say, ‘Thank you, Officer Battle-Hay for coming in and giving your help.’ And it just so happens that the event I’m going to talk about tonight was on one of those days where Officer Battle-Hay came in early to work to help out a patrol team,” said Smith.

Battle-Hay typically works the night shift, Smith said, but at 1:30 p.m. on June 13 he was on duty and nearby when the department received a call about a four-week-old that was not breathing at the intersection of Statesville Boulevard and West Innes Street. Battle-Hay was the first to arrive on the scene and found someone performing CPR on the infant at the BP gas station.

He then began to perform back blows on the infant, stopping once the infant began to cry and restarting when it became silent again. The infant was blue in color, but after the second set of back blows he began to regain his natural color, said Smith. Firefighters and EMS personnel then arrived on scene and continued to render aid to the infant and monitor his health.

“I’ve spoken to the family twice since this event, most recently on Friday evening, and I’m glad to report that everybody is healthy and doing well,” said Smith.

Smith also noted that the police department is choosing to withhold the body camera footage of the incident at the family’s request and said that he understood because he would not want to relive the “terrifying experience” multiple times either.

The infant, named Brooks, was at the meeting along with his twin brother, Bo, and his parents.

“Me and my wife, we have five kids, four boys and one girl. Before we had our last son, Ethan, my wife was pregnant with twins but we ended up losing them and it devastated her. So, I’m just very, very happy that I was able to be in the right place at the right time to help out this family and make sure they didn’t have to lose a child,” said Battle-Hay.

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