CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — Even if the whole thing didn’t happen in a loud grade school lunch room, no one would have heard the choking child crying for help, because an important thing to know about people who are choking is: They can’t make any noises.

Still, all the activity couldn’t have helped. But fortunately, another child saw what was happening, and that child told nine-year-old Liam Dougherty, who once learned from watching a movie (he can’t remember which one) how to do the Heimlich maneuver.

“I did feel some adrenaline,” said Dougherty, who is in the third grade. “Like, ‘I gotta help really fast.'”

He got behind the boy, made a fist below the boy’s ribcage and pushed, just as he somehow remembered from the movie. And a piece of string cheese lodged in the boy’s through came out.

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“Immediately, students came up to me: ‘Mr. T, did you hear?'” said Rich Tysarczyk, the school’s principal. He wasn’t in the cafeteria when the danger quickly came and went, but it was true: A child was choking, and the child’s friend Liam — a good friend, no less, not just an acquaintance — saved the boy, whose family declined through the school to participate in this story.

Mark Blanchard, Cumberland Valley School District’s superintendent, presented Dougherty a medallion Friday recognizing what he did.

“I’ve been a principal for 11 years and in the field for 20, and I’ve never seen anything quite like that,” Tysarczyk said. “It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and we’re just proud of his bravery and decision making.”

“That’s incredible,” said Dr. Becky Smith, a pediatric intensive care unit physician at UPMC Children’s in Harrisburg, who wishes more people of all ages would learn basic life support. “You can train even your own children to do this, and they can be the folks who save their best friend or the child at the table next to them.”

She said you might save a life and won’t hurt someone, as long as they’re actually choking. If someone can say they’re choking, that means they’re not choking; people who are choking can’t speak. They might be turning red or blue, and they might be making the universal sign for chocking — hands over the neck — which Smith said is something else all adults and children should learn, in case we’re ever the ones who need help.

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The way Liam saved his friend — fist below the ribcage, and push in and up — is how to do the Heimlich maneuver for anyone except a baby. For babies, Smith said, turn them face down — with their heads pointing downward, so gravity helps too — and give them blows to the back.

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