By Mark Schlinkmann
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — A St. Charles County police officer and an emergency room nurse used their CPR skills to revive a 6-year-old girl pulled unconscious from a swimming pool last weekend in Jefferson City.
Police said the girl, Kynnedi Terry-Nunley of Jefferson City, was hospitalized but was able to go back to school Thursday.
Police said Officer Robert Bell and Amanda Darby, 26, a registered nurse at St. Joseph Hospital West in Lake Saint Louis, took turns applying CPR to the girl for about five minutes at the pool at the Capitol Plaza Hotel the night of Jan. 17.
“Finally she started gurgling and coughing and regained a heartbeat and pulse,” said Capt. Dave Tiefenbrunn, a spokesman for St. Charles County police.
Moments earlier, he said, another man — Sid Turpin — had jumped into the pool to rescue the girl after another child reported someone was at the bottom.
Tiefenbrunn said Bell, Darby and Turpin were among a group of parents who were in Jefferson City with their children for a youth ice hockey tournament with the St. Peters Spirit club.
Tiefenbrunn said Kynnedi was with another group of children attending a birthday party.
Bell, 38, was a county sheriff’s deputy for seven years before moving with most other deputies to the new county police agency when it was formed earlier this month.
In 2009, he was honored by the sheriff’s department and the St. Charles Elks Lodge for saving a St. Charles County woman’s life by performing CPR until paramedics arrived.
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