A PRIMARY school mentor has been praised for saving a toddler's life when he was choking on a coin.

Caron Harrison, 54, a learning mentor at Beech Grove Primary in Middlesbrough, was in school the day before Autumn term started when Kirsty Nicholas, mother of 18-month-old Hunter, rushed into the building to say the toddler, who was down the road at his grandmother’s house, was unable to breathe.

The first-aid trained staff member sprinted to the house to find Hunter limp in his grandmother’s arms and blue in the lips.

Without hesitation, she took the child onto her knee and gave him firm back thrusts until a one pence coin flew out.

Ms Harrison, who first learned first aid in 1988 after her own daughter was saved from choking on a sweet by a bystander, said: “When I took him, his eyes were beginning to roll to the back of his head. I crouched down, put him face down over my knee and gave him five back thrusts.

“I was beginning to panic by the fifth one but it came shooting out. If it hadn’t, I was about to do abdominal thrusts. I didn’t have to think, it just came automatically – but it was the biggest relief in the world when it came out.

“The paramedics took him to hospital but they said if I hadn’t done what I did, that little boy would have died. That’s when it hit me.”

Now three years old, Hunter attends the nursery at Beech Grove.

Hunter’s grandmother Tina Nicholas, 44, now living in Thornaby, explained Hunter had picked the coin up when her back was turned.

She said: “At first I thought it was a biscuit, I never thought of a penny. We were hitting his back but we weren’t doing it right because we hadn’t done any first aid training. Caron 100 per cent deserves to get an award. Hunter wouldn’t be here today if not for her.”

Ms Harrison has been nominated for a St John Ambulance Everyday Heroes award to acknowledge her life-saving act.