Drowned toddler awakes after three-day coma

A young boy beat the odds by remarkably waking up from a coma three days after he nearly drowned in a swimming pool.

Three-year-old Eliyah Ohayon opened his eyes on Tuesday in what his parents called a “miracle”.

For three days Ohayon’s parents watched over him as he was kept in an induced coma and on life-support after the near-fatal accident over the weekend.

While swimming during a family visit to a friend’s home in Ashdod Ohayon apparently slipped free of his safety floats in the pool and was only discovered at the bottom several minutes later.

Although his father, Gil, immediately pulled him from the water, a Magen David Adom ambulance crew was unable to resuscitate him. Security cameras would later reveal that the boy was submerged in the water for four minutes and 50 seconds.

Ohayon was rushed to Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot in critical condition.

On Monday doctors decided to turn off the life-support systems to see if the young boy could survive on his own. Although breathing, he remained in a coma and his parents spent long hours talking to him to try to get a response. Then, at one point on Tuesday, his father tried asking if he would like to do his favorite thing of all, to go to the grocery store with his grandparents.

To everyone’s surprise and delight, Ohayon briefly opened his eyes and nodded in agreement. From that moment on doctors gained confidence and predicted that the boy would make a full recovery.