BOY, 6, RUSHED TO HOSPITAL BY TROOPER AFTER SWALLOWING QUARTER ON SCHOOL BUS

Six-year-old Jacob Morrison probably will never put his money where his mouth is again.

As the kindergartner from Jackson Elementary School rode home on a school bus Jan. 5, he put a quarter in his mouth. The coin had been given with the intention that he would buy an extra carton of milk, said his mother, Angela Perry.

He sucked on it for a moment, and then it suddenly got stuck in his throat, Perry said.

"It got lodged in there at an angle and he almost couldn't breathe," she said.

Other children informed the bus driver, who was driving east on Route K just outside of Gordonville. The driver was told that Jacob had a dime in his throat.

About 3:30 p.m., Cpl. Greg Kenley of the Missouri Highway Patrol was following behind the bus. Moments after he had passed it, he saw that the bus driver had turned on her flashing lights and was pulling onto the shoulder of the road.

"I was about 200 yards ahead of the bus then, but when I saw that I decided that something didn't look right," Kenley said.

The bus driver took Jacob out of the bus to get some air after making a radio call to the school. Kenley got out of his patrol car and could hear the boy struggling to breathe but saw that his breathing had not been cut off. The Highway Patrol instructs troopers not to give medical aid to a choking victim unless breathing has been completely stopped, he said.

Then the quarter must have shifted down into Jacob's throat, Kenley said, since the boy began panicking and thrashing.

"That's what convinced me to get him into the car as fast as I could," Kenley said.

As he buckled Jacob in with a seat belt, the trooper looked him in the eyes and told him that if he stopped breathing he should grab Kenley's arm and shake it. If Jacob had, Kenley said he would have used the Heimlich maneuver to attempt to dislodge the coin. The boy nodded, the trooper said.

Kenley said he made it from a half mile outside Gordonville to St. Francis Medical Center in three minutes, which is possible at 125 mph.

"I drove safely, but we didn't waste any time," Kenley said.

The trooper carried Jacob into the emergency room. By that time the quarter had moved again, down and out of Jacob's throat. Emergency room personnel induced vomiting, and Jacob spit out his milk money, Kenley said.

Madonna West, Jacob's grandmother, had been called by the school because Jacob's mother was not at home. West arrived at the emergency room after Kenley had left.

"It was a miracle that he got him here, because that lady bus driver didn't know what to do," West said. "She couldn't just leave all those other children, and the bus wouldn't have made it to the hospital that fast."

An emergency room attendant gave Jacob his quarter back in a plastic cup.

"The first thing he told me was that he was going to throw that quarter away," Perry said.

But so far he has kept it, she said.