After saving a student’s life, a high school basketball coach is being hailed as a hero.

Riley Kelly, a student at Papillion-La Vista South High School in Papillion, Nebraska, had just finished eating his cheeseburger when the meat and bun became stuck in his throat, clogging his windpipe.

Riley tried to force some milk down his throat with trembling hands, but the milk sat ominously in his throat and he couldn’t drink it.

“I just didn’t chew it thoroughly.” Riley told the station, “I’ve been in situations like this before where I try to wash it down because I have something stuck in there, and nine times out of ten, it works.” “This is the first time it hasn’t worked.”

“I was drinking the milk, and I didn’t feel any milk moving; I just felt the milk being held in my throat,” the adolescent said. I couldn’t even breathe.”

When Coach Joel Hueser, who was overseeing the lunch hour, spotted a close adolescent struggling to breathe, he leapt from his seat.

“It was all so sudden,” Riley remarked. “It was like a flash of lightning in my head but at the same time super slow. All I remember is just, like, the fear. Next thing you know, I was being saved.”

Riley was given the Heimlich technique, which was effective in removing the lump of food from his throat. Any instructor in his position, he said, would have behaved in the same manner.