Authorities said Xavier Rigney, 4, briefly got out of his mother's sight and somehow made his way through a locked fence before jumping into the pool.
WARNING: Video contains sensitive images. A Kansas father and his son were honored after saving a drowning 4-year-old boy from a pool. A father and his 12-year-old son are being hailed as heroes after authorities said they helped rescue a drowning, 4-year-old boy with autism from a pool.
Authorities in Lawrence, Kansas said little boy, Xavier Rigney, briefly got out of his mother's sight and somehow made his way through a locked fence before jumping into the pool. "His head goes completely under the water. His mouth and nose never come up above the water, and that's why we say they don't have the ability to scream," Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Lt. Jeff Krall, a paramedic who lost a child of his own in 2008, explained at a press conference. "What you see with his arms, you see just a little bit of movement, we call it climbing, they're trying to climb out of the water.
"When he started to cough up water and everything, I knew that was a good sign," Tom later recalled. "It definitely hits home a lot harder having a son myself."Xavier's mother, Alexis, reunited with Tom and Maddox for the first time on Thursday and thanked them for their heroic actions.