ATLANTA — A crisis call came in just after noon Friday to the Atlanta Police Department - a mother's plea to breathe life back into her 4-month-old baby.
It fell upon APD SWAT Team senior officer Robert Oden to take quick action. Bodycam video shows how he reacted to save the infant's life.
Officer Oden began to give CPR to the child - a first for the 18-year veteran of the Atlanta force.
Through it all, he said he was waiting for what he called that "new baby scream."
"I looked over and you could tell there was a little commotion going on. The mother of three, I believe - she was holding the baby. She got my attention. So the baby's not breathing," Oden said. "She ran up to me and said, he's not breathing. And right then, I just told her, you know, give me the baby. I kind of took a kneeling position on the ground, had my hand under the baby's head, and just started doing compressions, gave a breath, more compressions, you know, just meditated, just kind of went back to the training that we did, you know, every couple of years on how do you know CPR? You never think you're going to have to do it until, you know, something happens and that was it."
The officer added that "you hope you never have to do that with a child" but that "luckily I hope I did most of it right."
"I looked like, you know, the little guy was doing good, doing better, at least when they had him in the ambulance," he said.
11Alive spoke to Officer Oden on Friday, and he said the experience showed him the value of learning how to save a life - so that he can respond whenever the need should arise.
And not just the importance of it for law enforcement - but parents, too.
"You never think that CPR training is important until you're in that situation and then just, you know, encourage people to get out there and learn," he said. "Yeah, especially if you're a parent."
The good news was Oden was able to wake up the baby boy, just as paramedics were arriving.
It wasn't clear what caused the child's medical emergency. The mother told police he just stopped breathing.
Fortunately, though, he's now doing just fine.