Emergency services rescued a terrified and screaming toddler after he fell into a narrow pipe and became stuck about 12 feet (3.7 meters) underground in the yard of his Kansas home.
“Here we go,” Moundridge Police Officer Ronnie Wagner can be heard saying in bodycam footage, clearly relieved, as emergency responders pulled the unharmed 14-month-old boy from the hole Sunday. “Good.”
Wagner had arrived at the house just 15 minutes earlier. The toddler was sobbing as his father called out from the hole, “Hey, buddy. We’re going to pick you up.”
Wagner explained in a telephone interview Thursday that the boy was playing in the yard when he stepped on a lid covering the hole. The lid came off and he fell down as his mother watched.
At the scene, she held a younger baby in her arms as the boy’s father comforted her and the screaming toddler’s older brother.
But those screams were encouraging — they showed he was conscious — as was the fact that the boy could stand, Wagner said.
At first he resisted the rescue team’s attempts to wrap a rope around him so they could pull him out.
“He took it away from him because he wasn’t sure what was going on,” said Wagner, who explained that the toddler “was in distress and panic, and rightfully so.”
Next, they tried a PVC pipe with an L-shaped bend at the end, hoping to get it under the child. But when that didn’t work, Wagner modified the pipe into the type of catch stick normally used to catch wild animals.
“We call him MacGyver,” said Police Chief Jared Kaufman, who compared Wagner to the eponymous hero from the 1980s TV show who favored unconventional bunglers.
Wagner brushed off the compliment, saying it was the first time he had heard the nickname. He also insisted it took a crew to save the boy. The assistant fire chief was the one who reached into the hole and grabbed the toddler, while the EMS director manipulated the pipe.
Moments after the toddler emerged from the hole, doctors began examining him as his mother said, “Mommy is here.”
When Wagner checked the ambulance minutes later to see how the boy was doing, he was in her arms. “He loved his mother dearly,” explained Wagner, himself a father of two.
Wagner said the boy may have had some bruising, but he didn’t even need to go to the hospital. Wagner suspects he slowed his fall by swinging his arms.
No one knows exactly what the pipe was for, but it is suspected that it was once connected to a submersible pump. This pump was used to drain excess rainwater from the house.
“It was pretty wild,” Wagner said.
Moundridge, a town of about 2,000 people, is located about 40 miles north of Wichita.