Curious Courtney is the second story from the fourteenth episode of Season 7, which aired on August 20, 1996 on CBS. As with other Season 7 stories, it was not included in the 30-minute syndicated version of Rescue 911.
Story[]
Michael Bund had been a first-grade teacher at Fourteenth Street Elementary School in Bangor, Maine for eighteen years. On the afternoon of September 8, 1995, the new fall term was ending its first week, and six-year-old Courtney Stevenson and her friends, Joey Dawson and Aaron Dennis, were among the students in Mr. Bund's new class. He was teaching them about eye colors when Courtney dropped her pencil through a little hole in her desk on the floor. She went to get it and her finger got stuck in the hole. She screamed in pain and called out to Mr. Bund that her finger was stuck. "She shouted out, 'My finger is stuck in that little hole, and it won't come out,'" said Mr. Bund, who knew exactly what she meant. He tried to push her finger up, but it wouldn't budge. He recently had surgery on his right arm, and it was very difficult for him to use his left hand.
The principal, Christine McGregor, was notified of the incident when Adam, one of Mr. Bund's students, told her that Courtney's finger was stuck in her desk. "By the time I got there, she was scared and crying. But I figured I could calm her down and would be able to get her finger out and we'd go on our merry way," she said. Courtney's finger was very swollen and wedged in so tightly. Mrs. McGregor asked Mr. Bund to get some ice so the swelling would go down. "I felt sorry for her because I imagined the pain she was in at that moment. I know how it feels because I got my finger stuck in a door once and it really hurt," said Aaron.
Mrs. McGregor called in the gym teacher to help because he was well schooled in first aid. He tried to put soap on Courtney's finger, but it didn't work. Mr. Bund knew she and her family lived right next door to the school and her father, Kevin, worked from home. So he decided to take the remaining students to the playground with another class and then call Kevin. The kids said that he didn't want the others to hear Courtney yelling and they had put their fingers in the holes in their desks but were lucky.
Mr. Bund called Kevin, told him what was going on, and he came right over. "I felt very sorry for Courtney because it was the first week of school and I'm trying to meet people and now this has to happen," he said. Mrs. McGregor and the gym teacher could not get Courtney's finger out, so Mrs. McGregor went back to her office and called 911.
Four minutes after the call, a Bangor fire unit rescue including EMT Brian Higgs arrived on the scene. Mr. Bund gave Courtney a piece of candy to calm her down and Brian told his team that they would have to cut the top of her desk off. EMT Bill Van-Person was also part of the crew. "We realized that we needed more than just Vaseline to get her finger out and we decided to remove the desk from the little girl," he said. Courtney cried out to the paramedics not to cut her finger off and Bill told her that they wouldn't do so and that it would be okay.
The paramedics used scissors to cut Courtney's desk. "Once they removed Courtney from her desk, she still had that huge piece of metal on her finger and one of the firefighters gave her a comment, 'That's a nice little ring, Courtney,' and she chuckled," said Kevin. The cut of that piece was very delicate next to her finger. She screamed in pain, and they were finally able to remove her finger from it. "When her finger finally got out of the hole, you would've thought it was Christmas and she looked up and was very happy that it was over," said Kevin. "Now that it's all over it seems rather silly that we had to have such a huge response from the fire department for a small little girl, but the firefighters were fantastic," said Mrs. McGregor.
Since the incident, Mr. Bund and Mrs. McGregor told Courtney never to put her finger in the hole in her desk again and she promised. "It was really good to see my dad because I love him a lot and he's my daddy and he helped me," she said. Before the first week of school was over, she had made a lasting impression on her new classmates. Mr. Bund's class had been studying the Curious George books and they nicknamed her "Curious Courtney" because she just seemed to be so inquisitive about everything.
References[]
- ↑ Averill, Joni. 1995-10-19. "TV show re-creates Courtney Stevenson's plight". Bangor Daily News. P. B3.
| Rescue 911 episodes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|