Ethan Wing doesn't know it, but the Provo toddler is alive today because he has a doll of an arm.
While driving home for lunch Wednesday, 4th District Court bailiff Joe Morton noticed what appeared to be a toy doll's arm sticking out from a small irrigation ditch in front of a home at 73 N. 700 West.After continuing a short distance, Morton couldn't get the vision of the arm out of his mind. There's was something peculiar about that doll arm.
So he turned his vehicle around to investigate. The arm didn't belong to a doll. It was the arm of 16-month-old Ethan, who was stuck under a small culvert that runs underneath a driveway. The toddler was submerged in about a foot of water.
When Morton pulled the boy from the ditch, the toddler's face was blue. However, the boy soon began breathing on his own. Paramedics arrived a short time later and transported Ethan to the hospital, where he was examined and released an hour later to his mother.
"(Morton) could have said it was just a doll or a toy and kept on driving, but he didn't and my son is alive because of that instinct," said Lori Wing, the toddler's mother.
Police believe the boy was under water for about four to six minutes. The toddler wandered away from his 16-year-old brother and apparently slipped on the mossy ditch bottom. The teenage brother was looking for the toddler when Morton stopped.
"You want to say a lot of things to a person like this but there's nothing we can say or do to ever repay him. I can bake him some cookies or a cake, but that won't even come close to showing him how thankful we are," Lori Wing said.
When Ethan gets older, his mother said she will make sure that he knows who saved his life. She believes her son and Morton may even become lifelong friends.
"This is a good example of how people should follow those weird promptings they get," Lori Wing said.