3-Year-Old Girl Whose Heart Stopped Beating for 12 Minutes After Drowning in Pool Survives: 'She Was Without Life,' Says Her Mother

"Prayer and luck and divine intervention were the key factors," said Dr. Jeremy Garrett

Photo: Courtesy Alise Nipper Healing Fund

It was the longest 12 minutes of one Missouri mother’s life.

On July 29, 3-year-old Alise Nipper and her mother, Jamie, headed to a pool party with some of her daughter’s friends in Cape Girardeau, Missiouri.

“[We] wanted to catch up and have a good time before school starts,” Jamie told KFVS.

But after a couple hours of fun, parents saw lightning from afar and told the kids to get out of the pool.

“All of the sudden, I look over and she wasn’t there, where I last saw her,” she said.

Jamie ran to the water and saw her daughter’s foot under a raft.

“Something took over me,” she said. “I remember jumping across the pool, coming up and shouting, ‘Dial 911.’ I was praying while I grabbed her that she would start coughing as if she’d just fallen in, but when I brought her up from the water, it was evident she was without life. She was blue.”

Jamie’s friend, Heather Kyle, a nurse and CPR instructor, stepped in and performed CPR on Alise, who didn’t have a pulse.

“I had very little hope of a positive outcome,” Kyle told the news outlet of the incident. “I said, ‘We are going to do CPR until an ambulance gets here.’ ”

For 12 minutes, the little girl was pale and had no color until suddenly, she had a heartbeat.

“She all of the sudden had color and pink lips,” said Jamie. “Her heart started and she started breathing, it was strong, loud breaths.”

Since that frightening yet miraculous day, Alise has made a full recovery.

“Her body and her brain were hurt,” her doctor, Jeremy Garrett, told KFVS. “Her lungs took on severe injury, which continued to be a problem.”

Just six days after the incident, Alise began to improve, and when her ventilator was removed, she didn’t just talk – she sang.

“Her brain has gotten through it, her lungs recovered and as near as we can tell, she’s back to functioning as high level a 3-year-old can,” said Dr. Garrett.

Jamie now wants people to learn from her experience that fateful day in July, so she has been encouraging others to learn CPR.

“I look at her and think, ‘How amazing, how awesome is our God,’ ” said Jamie Nipper. “[We are] so blessed.”