A 6th grader saves the lives of 2 people on the same day

Davyon Johnson, 11, couldn’t quite understand it: the pizza party, the accolades from the mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma, his picture in the newspaper and on television — and the word that had been linked to his name: hero.

Why, the sixth grader asked his mother, was he being rewarded for doing the right thing?

“I told him, ‘You saved two people’s lives,’ ”said LaToya Johnson, Davyon’s mother. “‘That is special.’ ”

And so began a whirlwind December for Davyon, who lives in Muskogee, Oklahoma, who was honored by his community this month for saving the life of a fellow student who was choking and an older woman who was escaping a house fire, both on Dec 9.

The Muskogee Police Department and Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office presented Davyon with a certificate Dec 15, naming him an honorary member of their forces.

“Always willing to help, always just a friend to everyone,” Latricia Dawkins, the principal at Dayvon's school in the Muskogee public school district, said Sunday.

On the morning of Dec 9, Davyon was by the water fountain at school when he heard a seventh-grade boy say: “I’m choking." A cap from a water bottle had slipped into his throat, Dawkins said.

Davyon wrapped his arms around the student’s abdomen and performed the Heimlich maneuver, a technique he had learned on YouTube. He squeezed the boy’s abdomen three times before the cap flew out.

Then about 5 pm that day, Johnson and her son were on the road when they spotted smoke coming from a house.

“I didn’t think nothing of it, but he was like, ‘No, Momma, this is a house on fire,’” Johnson recalled her son saying.

She turned the car around, and there was a small fire near the back of the house.

Davyon got knocked on the front door.

Five people stepped outside, saw what was happening and ran, Johnson said. A sixth person, however, was having trouble. She was older and was using a walker.

“She wasn’t moving fast enough,” Davyon said. “So I’ve got to kind of help her get to her truck because everybody was leaving.”

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