A mother’s story: off-duty police officer saved my daughter’s life

19 April 2024

As she set out on a walk along Pembrokeshire’s Solva Beach on Monday 8 January, Francesca Jackson (Fran) was looking forward to welcoming a morning full of life’s simpler pleasures.

She was joined by her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Elliott and Labrador, Beans.

“It was a lovely walk to begin with. We were exploring our new home together,” said Fran, who had recently relocated to Wales from Brighton.

“Elliott was happily toddling along, pointing at things and telling me what she could see.

“I remember her being excited when she saw a woman with a dog of her own, telling me there was another doggy on the beach.”

As the two dogs briefly greeted each other, the women did so too. It was Dyfed Powys Police Officer Zoe Williams.

Within a handful of minutes, circumstances suddenly changed and the unthinkable happened.

 

Fran and Elliott and their Labrador Beans.

 

“We were still walking along and I had hold of Elliott’s hand when I felt her fall. Before I could look down, I just thought she’d tripped. But then I saw her face – her eyes had rolled back and she was completely unconscious,” Fran, 40, continued.

“I immediately thought the worst.”

Elliott’s collapse prompted a distraught Fran to scream for help from anyone who could hear her. Someone else arrived first to call 999, but it was Zoe who flew around the corner and put the toddler straight into recovery position for CPR.

Fran, who was beside herself with worry, says it was from this moment that the police officer took complete control of the situation.

“Out of pure fear, I was shouting out, ‘she’s dead’. Before that, I even rang my partner and Elliott’s dad, Mike, who was away on work, and asked him to call for an ambulance rather than just doing it myself – that’s how much I couldn’t think straight,” Fran continued. 

“Zoe looked me in the eyes and told me she was an off-duty police officer. A small part of me felt relief - if you can call it that - because I knew in that second she was going to do everything she could for my daughter.”

Twenty-five minutes of resuscitation attempts followed, including the use of a defibrillator retrieved by Fran from a nearby pub. The Harbour Inn was approximately 500 metres away, but ‘felt like forever’ to a woman reluctant to leave her child’s side.

Telling Fran in no uncertain terms that she would be helping Elliott a lot more by finding a defibrillator rather than staying put, it was both Zoe’s decisive action and decisive words that proved crucial in this critical period.

“At one point, she got tired from giving chest compressions and I took over,” Fran recalled, adding: “When she saw my technique wasn’t right, she immediately got me out of the way and resumed them herself. Her determination for Elliott was unbelievable.”

Zoe’s relentless efforts were already showing signs of paying off as paramedics arrived, with Elliott in and out of consciousness as she was rushed away to hospital. Inside the ambulance, her mother was instructed to keep her as responsive as possible.

Fran said: “She might not have been fully awake when I was talking to her, but I could tell she was there.”

Meanwhile back at the beach, after taking Elliott’s life into her own hands, Zoe - despite being due to go on holiday later that day - took the time to bring Beans back home and make sure she was fed and watered for the evening, having to locate the family’s cottage herself with only a rough area to go off.

Thankfully, Elliott made a full recovery from cardiac arrest at Cardiff Hospital, where doctors confirmed her extremely young age, combined with the remoteness of the incident, meant she was looking at only a five per cent survival rate without CPR. The tot, who will turn three in September, is yet to receive a formal diagnosis but was fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) to correct any dangerously abnormal heart rhythms in the future.

A couple of weeks into her stay in Cardiff, she had a very delighted visitor at her bedside.

“It was incredibly emotional to be reunited with Zoe. We both just burst into tears,” said Fran. “As Elliott gets older, she will understand better what Zoe did for her that day.

“Words will never be able to express how grateful we are.”

As the dust settled on the incident, this became one reunion of many. Fran and Zoe no longer share only a painful memory, but now a close friendship as well.

Fran said: “We see each other every week now. Elliott has such a lovely relationship with her, which is amazing.”

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