When a little boy was seen walking the streets by himself on Monday, policeman James Hurst from Georgia was dispatched to find out what was going on.
Just to be sure, James decided to bring the 16-month-old child to a nearby hospital to get him checked out. But during a medical examination, the scared little boy started to cry.
That’s when James did the most heartwarming thing.
“I asked the hospital staff if I can hold him to comfort him and soothe him a little bit to try to calm him down, to continue getting medical care,” James told WSAV.
“And they said that was fine.”
Before long, the toddler fell asleep in James’s arms, and James ended up spending the following two hours with him.
While his caring nature went a long way in determining his response to the upset child, James reckons that it also comes from being a dad.
James has two young boys, one who has Down syndrome, so he drew upon his personal experience as a dad and sitting in hospitals with his kids.
“I just knew this child needed somebody to be there for him,” he said. “It was just human instinct – humanity.”
A beautiful photo of James holding the young child was released on Facebook by the Savannah Chatham Police Department, and has since gone viral with 8.2K likes and over 2.8K shares.
Despite going beyond the call of duty, James believes he was just doing his job. Describing the public’s reaction as “quite overwhelming,” James is eager for the world to know one thing:
“This job is so much more than just chasing the bad guys,” he said. “It’s what we do, every single day, not just me, but the 600 officers that are on this department … It’s just not captured. This one time it was captured.”
SHARE if this warmed your heart.
