A 9-month-old boy is recovering after he stopped breathing on South Atlantic Avenue in Daytona Beach Shores, choking on a large gummy candy that had lodged under his teeth. The baby's mother handed the unresponsive infant to Sgt. Derek Taylor of Volusia County Beach Safety just after 3:20 p.m. on Wednesday, and within moments Taylor was applying emergency choking-rescue techniques he had drilled for years.
Taylor and a trainee he had been supervising were the first responders to reach the scene, according to Fox 35 Orlando. Taylor said he knew exactly what to do the moment the baby was handed to him, giving the infant five back slaps. When he turned the baby over, he saw the gummy candy under the baby's teeth, and a family member removed it. Taylor was preparing to follow with five chest thrusts when the baby began recovering.
A Sergeant's Training Kicks In
“Time mattered a lot,” Taylor said, according to the same report, recalling how he and his trainee hurried to the scene once the call came in. Taylor was in the middle of training another employee when the emergency was dispatched, and he attributed his readiness to CPR instruction that beach safety personnel receive as part of their certification. Choking response is a core component of that training, and Taylor said the drills paid off in the moment that counted.
The American Heart Association's updated CPR and emergency cardiovascular care guidelines, which as of October 2025 recommend alternating five back blows with five chest thrusts using the heel of one hand for a responsive choking infant. It was the first full revision of the association's resuscitation protocols since 2020, underscoring how recently the standardized approach had been refined.
Why Every Second Counted
The stakes in an infant choking emergency are severe. Brain damage can begin after about four minutes without oxygen. Unintentional airway obstruction is already the leading cause of injury-related death among infants under one year old nationwide, per the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a national study of injury data from 2001 to 2016 found that children under five accounted for 75% of pediatric choking fatalities in the United States, according to research published on PubMed.
The candy involved in Wednesday's incident falls squarely into a known danger category. Hard and sticky candies are classified as high-risk choking hazards that should be withheld from children under four years old, according to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nationally, an estimated 12,000 children are sent to hospital emergency rooms each year after nonfatal food choking incidents, with one child dying from choking every five days, per the Moultrie County Health Department.
Taylor's Decade on Volusia's Coast
Taylor has served with Volusia County Beach Safety for more than ten years and was promoted to sergeant in November 2021, according to the division's own account. Full-time ocean rescue officers with the agency respond to medical emergencies along the coastline they patrol. That beach-safety response was on display Wednesday in Daytona Beach Shores, a stretch of South Atlantic Avenue covered by the Daytona Beach Shores Department of Public Safety. According to Volusia County Government’s Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, services in the 16 municipalities and unincorporated and specialized areas, including beaches and airports, involve 16 local law enforcement agencies and 14 fire/rescue/EMS agencies.
The infant was taken to a local hospital for a precautionary evaluation and was expected to be ok. Taylor used the incident to urge parents and caregivers to take CPR classes themselves. The incident was a pediatric emergency handled by agency staff.
