A 9-year-old saves a friend after he was gasping for air while eating a granola bar. Jayceon Branch didn’t wake up thinking he’d save a life that morning. He was just a little boy, tying his sneakers, and grabbing his backpack, getting ready for another school day. But everything changed somewhere between the laughter and the basketball game, between the bounce of the ball and the rush of recess.
It was a granola bar. Just a snack. Just another ordinary moment—until it wasn’t. His best friend, seven-year-old Donye Moore, took a bite, and suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. A silent panic. Hands grasping at his throat. The universal sign of choking. And in that instant, without hesitation, Jayceon stepped in.
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“I didn’t know he was actually, actually choking, so I just did my thing, which was a Heimlich,” he said.
His thing.
A 9-year-old boy shouldn’t have to know how to save a life, but this one did. He had watched a YouTube video and had seen how a simple motion—two hands pressed into a stomach, a firm upward thrust—could mean the difference between life and death. And when the moment called for it, he answered.
And it was all caught on camera at Raleigh Oak Charter School. Jayceon wrapping his arms around Donye, pressing twice, and then relief. The food dislodged. Breath returned. A second chance at recess, at laughter, at life.
“We were playing basketball and he ate a granola bar and we started playing longer until he started choking,” Jayceon said. “I just did my thing.”
His thing.
And oh, how we need more boys who make saving lives their thing.
When the teachers watched the footage, they were in awe. When Donye’s mom, Aja Moore, heard what happened, her heart caught in her throat.
“At first, I wasn’t understanding that he had to be given the Heimlich maneuver or anything like that,” she said. “It was surprising. I’m just thankful his friend was able to demonstrate that on him.”
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Eric Johnson, the executive director of Raleigh Oak Charter School, couldn’t have been prouder.
“We teach our kids to take care of each other, so this is really just a prime example of that,” he said. “Jayceon just jumped into action so quickly. We’re really proud of him.”
And isn’t that a lesson for all of us? To take care of each other? To watch, to learn, to be ready—not just for the ordinary but for the moment when the ordinary turns extraordinary. When the bite of a granola bar becomes a desperate gasp. When a 9-year-old boy doesn’t hesitate.
Because kindness saves, quick thinking saves. Love, wrapped in the arms of a little boy who didn’t second-guess, saves.
Jayceon saved a life that day. And maybe he reminded us all how to do the same.
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Proverbs 17:17 "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity."
h/t: People
Featured Image Credit: YouTube/11Alive
