Body cam shows Plano officer saving little girl choking on marble

A Plano officer is credited by doctors with saving a little girl’s life when she was choking on a marble and unable to breathe.

The officer is trained for emergencies. That training was the difference between life and death.                 

On July 5, 20-month-old Ariana Yousif was at home in Plano with relatives and her parents. She was playing with a marble when she got it lodged in her throat.

After the adults spotted Ariana choking and unable to breathe, they called 911. Body camera video shows Officer Coy Clements, a 17-year veteran, arriving on scene and immediately going to work.

Ariana coughed up a piece of cucumber and started breathing again. But once at Plano Children's, doctors discovered a marble still lodged in her throat. Doctors said it had shifted to a spot where she could barely breathe on her own but needed to do surgery to clear her airway.

Yousif says it was too risky to pull the marble out so a surgeon pushed it down to her stomach. Now, he has his happy girl back.

“If it wasn't for God, if it wasn't for Officer Clements, for my sister, the two doctors, I don't think Ariana would be here today” the grateful father said.

“Every call I've ever been on has been way harder than this one. This was just one of those calls where everything just worked,” the officer said. “There's so many other calls where nothing works and you have to improvise. This one just wasn't that way. It was that one in a million call where everything happened just right.”

Officer Clements says, in a way, the experience has saved him too. He was beginning to doubt his role as a police officer.

“We'll always be tied because of that one instance,” he said. “And that validates an entire career.”

The father is now warning other parents to be cautious of small things you have in your home. He says it was a decorative marble from an upstairs bathroom they thought was out of reach for Ariana.

Officer Clements credits God for the opportunity to be there for Ariana's family and putting him in the position to save her life.