"I'm so proud of her, I don't even know what to do," the girls' mother said of the 10-year-old.
A little girl is lucky to be alive — thanks to her big sister who saved her from drowning in their community pool.
Jayla Dallis, 10, and 3-Year-Old Kayli were playing in the pool at their apartment complex in Atlanta last month, according to reports. Kayli jumped into the water from the pool steps with a green floating tube around her waist.
But it wasn't long before little Kayli tumbled over in the water, her head submerged and her feet sticking up through the floatie.
Surveillance video of the incident shows Kayli kicking and thrashing, working hard to get her had above water and eventually slipping out of the tube. Kayli is submerged for nearly two minutes.
Jayla, on the pavement, realizes her sister is drowning and springs into action. She runs across the deck and jumps into the pool to save Kayli.
"I had to grab her by her hair, because that's the only thing I could reach because she was almost touching the ground. She was heavy, so I had to pull her by the hair and then I grabbed her waist and pulled her up," Jayla told WSB-TV.
When Jayla lifted her to the deck, she even started CPR. She had only seen the procedure done on TV.
Family and building staff rush over to Kayli while a bystander call 911. An officer soon arrives at the scene to help and the accident hits close to home for him.
“I saw my little girl laying there. Same kind of little bathing suit she wears. Same little hair pulled up in a little bun up top,” Chamblee Police Sgt. Ed Lyons told ABC News.
Little Kayli is taken to the hospital, where doctors aren't sure if the girl would survive.
But after two weeks of recovery, Kayli was able to go home on Friday.
"I cried tears of joy because I get to see this child and where she is now, instead of where she was," mom Daneshia Dallis told WSB-TV.
Happy to have her baby home, Daneshia is thankful her other daughter stepped up in the moment Kayli needed it most.
"As a 10-year-old, to think about all of that in a traumatic situation, I'm so proud of her, I don't even know what to do," Dallis said.
Daneshia wasn't at the pool that day her daughter nearly drowned; the girls' aunt was watching the kids. But she has some words of advice for all adults with kids in the swimming pool.
“Don’t take your eyes off of them. All the floats are not safe. Be careful. Watch your kids,” Daneshia told ABC News.
You can help the family by donating to their GoFundMe.
RELATED STORIES
