Gray Forrester of Knoxville, Tennessee may be the youngest hero to live. This 4-year-old brother saved his little sister from drowning in their backyard pool. This sort of story often doesn’t have a happy ending; one of the leading causes of death for young children is drowning in a pool. But young Gray prevented his sister from the worst when he took immediate action after his own sister fell in their pool.
How the 4-Year-Old Brother Saved His Sister
Gray and his 2-year-old sister, Andie, live in a home with a pool. But their parents were not at all naïve to the risk to young children. That’s why they took all the precautions to protect their children.
Their mother, Laura Forrester, told an affiliate of Knoxville NBC in an interview about the incident. She said, ““We installed the safety fence, and the kids knew never to go out there without an adult or babysitter.”
That’s not all they did, though. “We installed beeps on the doors, and we thought we had taken all the precautions.”
“We had hammered it in their heads that they never go out there without a grown-up,” she explained.
(Interested in more information on pool safety to prevent drowning? Click here.)
Despite all their efforts to minimize risk, Gray and Andie made it into the pool area in the span of only a handful of minutes when they weren’t under the mother’s immediate supervision. And the worst happened; 2-year-old Andie jumped in.
Mother, Laura, didn’t know what had happened until both the children were out of the pool and safe. Andie approached her mother soaking wet and said, “I falled in the pool! I falled in the pool!”
As Laura describes it, she then looked at Gray, who was also soaking wet, and Andie told her, “He saved me.” In that moment, Laura panicked.
“It happened so fast because they had just been with me not even five minutes ago,” Laura told NBC.
Watch the family talk about what happened here:
As Gray tells the story of how the 4-year-old brother saved his sister from drowning, he says, “I looked right here. She was doggy paddling.”
When he saw her in the pool by herself, Gray jumped in after her to save her. “I grabbed her tummy,” he said. “I was trying to lift her so she could breathe.”
And the 4-year-old brother saved his sister just like that.
But Laura believes the two young children had some help from God. She explained, “I think that moment for a 4-year-old to be able to react like that, is a God thing.”
Continuing on, she said, “I think God was with Andie and Gray that day, and that’s the only thing that makes sense because it was so remarkable.