Dying 11-year-old consoles father as he takes last breath after asthma attack: ‘I love you’
Camron Jean-Pierre was at his grandmother’s house in Brooklyn on New Year’s Day when he died of an allergic reaction to fish.
An 11-year-old New Jersey died from an allergic reaction to the smell of cooking fish in his grandmother’s home, yet he used his last breaths to comfort his beloved father.
Camron Jean-Pierre was at his grandmother’s house in Brooklyn on New Year’s Day when, according to the New York Daily News, he became ill shortly after walking inside the house. Camron had asthma and used a nebulizer, but it wasn’t helping to calm the attack.
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“I don’t know, for some reason he was saying it wasn’t working,” Camron’s father, Steven Jean-Pierre, said. “He kept telling me, ‘I’m not able to breathe.’”
The family suspects protein particles from the fish in the air caused the fatal reaction. It appears that the family did not realize the severity of his fish allergy.
“We knew he had an allergy…but usually, he don’t get nothing that severe like that,” he said. “He don’t eat fish. We don’t put it around him. It just so happens they was cooking it when we came in.”
Jean-Pierre desperately tried to save his son as he struggled to breathe. In the midst of the chaos, his son delivered a heartbreaking message.
“He told me, ‘Daddy, I love you. I love you,’” Steven said. “He gave me two kisses.”
Camron lost consciousness before an ambulance arrived. EMS raced Camron to Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center, where doctors were unable to save him.
“It felt like he had no pulse,” Jean-Pierre said. “I tried to give him the CPR and he came back but I wish I knew how to keep pumping him because he woke up and I felt his heart and everything. But I stopped and sat him up to make him feel better.”
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Camron was a sixth grader at Theodore Schor Middle School in Piscataway, N.J., where he “made everyone around him happy,” Jean-Pierre said. Camron also played sports. He was a wide receiver for the Brooklyn Skyhawks youth football team as well as playing basketball for the Flatbush Youth Association.
“Everybody gravitated to my son,” he said. “He was a leader. He had ambition.”
