Baltimore County 5-year-old, 10-year-old honored for saving grandmother's life

A Baltimore County 5-year-old boy and his big brother have been deemed heroes in Perry Hall for saving their grandmother's life, not just once, but twice. 

If it wasn't for their brave actions, their mother said that things could have been much worse. 

For his bravery, Liam was presented with a certificate, a Baltimore County Police plastic badge, and a plastic police officer duckie in front of his class at Honeygo Elementary School, alongside his principal, the school's student resource officer, and his mom.

A hero can come in all shapes and sizes

Liam, 5, and his big brother Ashton Green Scott, 10, are both proof that a hero can come in all shapes and sizes. Their mom, Ashley Paschall, will tell you because she remembers late April when she got a phone call at work that she will never forget. 

"I got a phone call, and I heard my 5-year-old, and he said, 'Mommy, something's wrong with Mimi. Mimi's not feeling well.' And so, I'm like, 'Liam, what's going on?' And he's like, 'Mommy, Mimi is on the floor,'" Ashley Paschall said. 

Liam was at home with his grandmother, whom he called Mimi, in April when he noticed she was unresponsive. He thought her blood sugar had dropped, knowing that she is diabetic. 

"I [was] sad because she fell on the floor," Liam said. 

"She has the Libre in her arms, so when her sugar is either low or high, it'll beep, so he knows that when it's beeping, that her sugar's either low or high. So, he said, 'Mommy, her insulin is low,'" Paschall said. 

Paschall rushed home from work in Annapolis, called 911, and stayed on the phone with her son until help arrived.

"Mind you, we were on a group FaceTime. I had my aunt on the phone, my uncle on the phone, my brother on the phone, so we're all just saying a million things at one time, and he's over there, just still trying to keep her awake," Paschall said. "So he's trying, he's like, 'Mommy, I can't open the Coke to give her the soda.' So, then he knows how to run and get a banana. How, I don't know, but he runs to get a banana because he knows it has sugar."

Moments later, medics arrive, but the door is locked. Liam, too little to unlock the door,  thinks of something clever to let the emergency crew inside the house.  

"I got the chair and put it up on the door and unlocked it," Liam said.

"He took the bench chair from her kitchen and went and pushed it against the front door to try to stand on top to unlock it," Paschall added. 

Responders got inside and quickly transported his grandmother, Mia Moody, to the hospital. 

Doctors later shared that she had suffered a stroke.

"If he didn't call, she wouldn't have made it"

"I don't know what happened, but the next thing I knew, I just woke up in the hospital," said Mia Moody, Liam and Ashton's grandmother. 

"If he didn't call, she wouldn't have made it," Paschall said. 

No one knows exactly how little Liam knew how to help his grandmother, but some would say he learned it from his big brother Ashton, who experienced a similar emergency just a few weeks later. He ended up saving his grandmother's life, too. 

"I went to get my grandma's phone call 911, and I stayed on the phone with them. I told them what happened. I listened to all the directions," Ashton Green Scott said. 

"He was able to follow the directions from the dispatcher; the whole time he was able to tune everybody out and was just focusing on her. They made sure that she was on the ground, lying flat down," Paschall said. "For them to be so young and so attentive to their grandmother it's just, it's a blessing." 

"He knows now how to save people's lives," Green Scott said. 

It was a small reminder that helping someone doesn't take much.