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Illinois Father Hurrying to Get Choking 1-Year-Old to Hospital Arrested for Speeding, Nurses Pay His Bond

A father in Illinois had one thing on his mind as he raced down the highway Saturday night: get his choking daughter to the hospital.

However, in doing so, Darius Hinkle had multiple police speeding behind him for miles as he broke 100 mph getting his 1-year-old to Touchette Regional Hospital in Centreville, a suburb of East St. Louis.

“The first thing on my mind was to get her to the hospital,” he tells KTVI April 6. “That’s my daughter. I didn’t want anything to happen to her.”

Hinkle arrived at Touchette with his daughter, Damani, in tow along with the toddler’s mother, Donecia Pittman. Damani was choking on a penny.

“I got out and I put my hands up, and I yelled and told the police, ‘My baby is choking.’ And I told them multiple times that she was choking,” Pittman says. “They were just worried about the fact that we were speeding.”

She said multiple police agencies were on the scene, and Hinkle, who admitted he did not have a valid driver’s license, was arrested and taken to jail.

When Pittman arrived at the jail to bail him out, however, she learned it had been taken care of by the nurses at the hospital who chipped in the undisclosed bail amount after they learned what happened.

Pittman said a nurse was there saying they want to bail out her daughter’s father.

“She said ‘I’m the nurse from Touchette Hospital,'” Pittman says.

Touchette Hospital confirmed to the news outlet that multiple nurses contributed to the bail. Meanwhile, Damani’s parents are appreciative of the nursing staff.

“I just, I mean … I can’t thank them enough,” says Hinkle.

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