Swimmer rescues unconscious 6-year-old girl in Centereach pool

An unconscious girl at the bottom of a Brookhaven Town pool was rescued Friday when a swimmer saw her and dove in to carry her up to the surface, Suffolk police said.

Henry Duarte lifted the 6-year-old girl from the Centereach Pool about 5:10 p.m., police said, and the lifeguards then gave her rescue breaths until she spit out water. Police closed down roads as they rushed the girl to Stony Brook University Hospital, where she was in stable condition Friday night, officials said.

Still shaken up three hours later, Duarte said he was in the water helping a boy search for his missing goggles when he saw a child lying face down at the 4-foot end of the pool.

“I thought she was gone,” said the Port Washington man, 39, a father of twins and wrestling coach with the Port Washington Youth Activities, a sports nonprofit. “She was so blue.”

When they broke through the water, Duarte said about 10 lifeguards ran over and he screamed to them, “CPR and 911.”

Eventually, the girl coughed up green-brown mucus and kept coughing it out, he said.

“Every time she did that, I kept wiping her face,” he said. “I shed a tear. But my kids were there. I didn’t want my kids to see me crying.”

Now a waiter, Duarte said he kept his composure with the help of years working as a doctor’s medical assistant. When the girl started crying, he recounted, her mother appeared, repeating to her child, “I’m right here.”

Just before he spotted the girl, Duarte said, he heard a man looking around the pool area for his daughter. He later found out that was her father.

But the girl was lying in the water near a lifeguard, Duarte said, and he wonders why no one spotted her.

Brookhaven Town spokesman Kevin Molloy said the lifeguards pulled the girl up onto a deck after Duarte swam up with her and administered life-saving measures. Town officials are looking into what happened, he said.

Duarte said he usually works Fridays but had decided to take the day off to bring his 7-year-old twins to the pool and to see their mother, who lives in the area.

“I guess God puts you in a certain place for a reason,” he said.

Duarte said he wanted to buy a teddy bear for the girl and bring it to her at the hospital.

“I’m just glad she’s alive,” he said. “I just want to make sure she was OK, laughing and smiling again.”