Boy was biking down a busy road to save his dad’s life. Then his teacher came along | The State

The boy’s dad was on the floor, unconscious, and he couldn’t figure out how to call 911 on the locked phone. He knocked on the neighbors’ doors but nobody was home, so he got on his bicycle and started out for his grandmother’s house five miles away, according to a video interview from the Greenville County, South Carolina school district.

“This week a teacher and student saved a life. Keller Sutherland was driving home from Ellen Woodside Elementary when she saw a child riding down Highway 25 on his bicycle. The child appeared scared and was peddling as fast as he could. Sutherland recognized the child as one of her former students.,” the school district wrote on Facebook, sharing the video and hailing both as heroes.

Cameron was riding his bike down Highway 25 in Greenville County, a busy road, when a teacher from his school drove by. Sutherland, said in the video, “I told my husband, ‘There’s a child in the road on his bike, not sure what’s going on but I feel like I need to turn around and see what’s going on.’”

“God just intervened and placed me where I needed to be in that moment for Cameron,” she said. “Cameron was so calm and brave in that moment. I don’t want to say it was because of me, but I was just thankful God placed me there and had a familiar face for Cameron.”

“My teacher was on her way back from school and she saw me and she told me she was going to call 911 for my dad,” Cameron said on the video.

Cameron was in her class last year. “He couldn’t really tell me too much.” She asked what was happening and if his dad knew where he was. “He said, ‘My dad’s diabetic. Sometimes he has episodes and when he does he loses brain function.’ And I said, ‘So dad needs help?’” Sutherland explained in the video.

He told the teacher he could not call 911 because he could not unlock his dad’s phone.

They got back to the house to find Cameron’s dad on the floor of the bathroom and got an ambulance to the house to help.

Shawn McCain, the school’s principal, said they are taking a lesson from Cameron’s experience. “Cameron was doing exactly what he was taught, but it was a different phone,” he said, adding that the school plans to teach students how to make emergency calls from a cell phone even when you don’t have the pass code.

Cameron’s dad is OK, the Greenville News reports, and was treated at the house by EMS.

Charles Duncan

843-626-0301

Charles Duncan covers what’s happening right now across North and South Carolina, from breaking news to fun or interesting stories from across the region. He holds degrees from N.C. State University and Duke and lives two blocks from the ocean in Myrtle Beach.