Police lay down their lives willingly to fulfill their duty as a police officer.
And Hastings-on-Hudson, NY Police Officer Jessie Ferreira Cavallo did just that over the weekend.
Cavallo was on her way to work in the village when she saw a boy running along Saw Mill River Parkway in Yonkers.
With horror, she said she watched the boy climb up over a guardrail and jump several feet from an overpass onto the concrete below.
“Everything happened so fast and I think my adrenaline was pumping so high,” Cavallo told LoHud. “He just climbed up and jumped off.”
She sprang into action and grabbed some first aid materials from the car.
She saw blood and what looked like the lifeless body of the boy.
She then jumped down after him without thinking twice.
“I wasn’t thinking too much,” Cavallo said. “I just knew, when I looked down and saw him … he looked dead. I couldn’t see anything other than blood. I thought to myself, ‘He needs help. I need to help him.'”
Thankfully Cavallo wasn’t alone in her rescue mission.
Another woman in a military uniform saw what happened and stopped to assist her.
“Both me and her together, we were able to aid him and assist him,” she said. “We were talking to each other like we worked together.”
The women secured the boy’s neck in a brace and placed a splint on him. The boy was mostly unresponsive but he eventually opened his eyes.
“I was talking,” she said. “He wasn’t really responding back.”
An ambulance arrived a short while later and took the boy to Westchester Medical Center.
USA Today reports that the boy suffered a broken arm, nose and leg injuries but is expected to survive.
The boy is a Bronx native who left the nearby Andrus campus in Yonkers.
Andrus is a private, nonprofit that provides services for vulnerable children and children with special needs and emotional/behavioral issues.
“Friday, after this whole thing happened, I went to work and worked to 11 p.m.,” Cavallo said. “I didn’t realize what was going on until yesterday. That’s when it hit me. I didn’t realize how high it was. It seemed doable. It didn’t seem that high. I thought I jumped over a brick wall, or a cement barrier. It was so fast. It was more like tunnel vision. I saw the boy and I needed to get to him. I didn’t see anything else.”
Cavallo said she was anxious to visit the boy and see how he was doing. But this isn’t the first time that Cavallo saved a life.
The 28-year-old officer has received six lifesaving awards in her seven years of police work.
She saved an elderly man from a heart attack using a defibrillator and CPR, as well as individuals who were having a heroin overdose by administering naloxone. She has also done undercover work for the FBI and Westchester County Task Force.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
