Durham 14-year-old recovering after near-drowning at hotel pool

A 14-year-old boy from Durham is recovering after nearly drowning in a hotel pool.

A few weeks ago, Keaton Nichols and family were visiting Charlotte for a baseball tournament when they decided to hang out at their hotel's pool.

Something went wrong, and Nichols didn't resurface from the water.

"We never thought this would happen to Keaton," his mother, Stacie Nichols said. "We were sitting around the pool talking and noticed that Keaton went underwater, thought he was swimming underwater because he can do that, but it wasn’t until his younger brother said mom he’s not coming up."

It happened in an instant.

“He was completely limp and started to turn blue, and I had never seen anything like that before in my entire life," said his father, Don Nichols.

Keaton's mom began CPR.

“It was very hard, very hard as parents, and even harder to be the ones to do CPR to save him, but thankfully we knew CPR and were able to do that and we’ve been told here at [the hospital] that that is what gave him the greatest outcome," she said.

Keaton is now working to recover. He's still weak from being on a ventilator and doctors still aren't sure if he went into cardiac arrest or had a seizure in the water.

“Regardless of the age of the person, even if it’s an adult, you should never swim alone," Stacie Nichols said.

"He had no pulse, no heartbeat when we pulled him out of the pool," Don Nichols.

Keaton will soon be discharged from a Charlotte-area hospital, and the family will head back home to Durham. The family is looking forward to spending Father's Day weekend together.