Thomas MacMillan Photo
The 911 caller was “freaking out.” Dispatcher Dave Mancini heard people in the background screaming over the unconscious 4‑year-old they’d just pulled from a swimming pool. He knew they had to act right away to save the boy’s life.
“Sir, help me help this child,” Mancini repeated calmly.
The call came into the New Haven 911 dispatch center on the morning of Monday, July 11. Drawing on 14 years of training and experience, Mancini was able to walk the caller through the steps of CPR — helping to save the life of young Maliki Sessions of 60 Weybosset St.
Mancini (pictured above) did it by staying calm and by calming down the caller, a relative of the boy. Through the phone, he was able to oversee a response that kept the boy’s heart pumping for the crucial couple of minutes it took for paramedics to arrive. Mancini’s work has made him a local hero, and earned the 43-year-old New Haven native a spot on the Today show.
On Wednesday, the plaudits continued as Mancini received an official citation from his union and a pin from his boss.
The leadership of AFSCME Local 884 gathered on the fourth floor of police headquarters of 1 Union Ave., where the NASA-space-command-like 911 dispatch center is located. Union president Ron Hobson presented Mancini with an official certificate of recognition before a group photo with the executive board.
Mancini then sat down in the dispatcher break room and spoke about July 11.
“It was just a normal shift,” he said. Then the call came in: a boy in a pool, face down, not breathing.
Mancini could hear screaming and yelling on the other end of the line. He told the caller, a man, to have the others take the boy out of the pool. Meanwhile, he reached for his response cards, a Rolodex-like stack of cards that remind the dispatcher of what questions to ask and instructions to give for different medical conditions.
“I go right to the unconscious card,” Mancini recalled.
Then he learned the kid wasn’t just unconscious, he wasn’t breathing. And he had no pulse.
Mancini flipped to the CPR card. As he began to give instructions, he also had to contend with a caller who was not only beside himself with anxiety, but relaying his instructions to another man, who was performing CPR on the 4‑year-old.
“He’s upset,” Mancini recalled. The caller kept asking why the paramedics hadn’t arrived. “He’s shouting, ‘Where are they?’”
There are two ways to deal with a caller like that, Mancini said. The first is “repetitive persistence.” Dispatchers are trained to repeat their instructions in the same calm manner over and over again, he said. If the dispatcher stays cool, the caller will too.
Second, dispatchers are trained to use the caller’s name to bring their attention back to the matter at hand. In this case, Mancini didn’t have the name. He substituted “sir,” as in, “Sir, you’re doing a great job. The paramedics are coming.”
As he relayed the CPR instructions, the caller would begin to lose himself to panic and Mancini would have to reel him back in. “You’d see him re-freak out and I’d bring him back down.”
Mancini found himself calmly repeating, “Sir, help me help this child.”
He talked him through where to place one’s hand for CPR and how deep the compressions should be. He had the caller focus by counting off the compressions as the other man performed them on the child. “One one-thousand, two one-thousand…”
Eventually, the paramedics arrived. Once Mancini was assured they were treating the boy, he ended the call. It had been five minutes and 50 seconds long, including a couple minutes of CPR.
Later, Mancini called a firefighter friend of his to see what happened to the 4‑year-old. He said he doesn’t usually do that. “This one, it kind of piqued my interest.”
Mancini has since had the opportunity to meet boy whose life he helped save. “I’m really happy that the little boy’s happy.”
The little boy is alive today in part because of Mancini’s training, including a CPR refresher just the week before the call. At that training, firefighter Rene Cordova started with role-playing of talking through a caller, just as Mancini did on July 11.
Mancini also stressed that he was able to help because of the team of dispatchers with whom he works. “The reason why it worked that day was the key people I was with.”
The center’s crew all support each other, he said. Mancini, who grew up in Church Street South and now teaches martial arts and rides his Suzuki GSXR 1000 with the Wild Style Riders Motorcycle Club, said his co-workers take animal-related emergency calls for him. He has a soft spot for pets, he said.
“I can’t handle pet calls,” he said. If it had been a dog in the pool on that Monday morning, his cool demeanor would have gone out the window. He said. “I would’ve bawled right there.”