11-year-old boy in intensive care after water bottle 'sucked his tongue in'

An 11-year-old Florida boy was seriously injured in a freak accident at school when a water bottle "sucked his tongue in" and had to be surgically removed. Demetrice Gibson was in gym class in Orlando when he took a sip of water from an aluminum bottle.

"He went in to have a drink and when he went to pull it away from his mouth, it just sucked his tongue in," said his mother, Ebony Gibson. "My heart just dropped. It just dropped." Doctors surgically removed the bottle and put Demetrice on a ventilator.



He remains in the intensive care unit at Arnold Palmer Hospital. "His airways had swollen up so badly and his tongue swollen up so badly, he couldn't breathe on his own," Ebony Gibson said. "He's very scared." Gibson said the grooves inside the neck of the bottle cut his tongue and lips.

Gibson said she's throwing away all the aluminum water bottles in her house. "So if you have them in your home, please throw them away, get rid of them," she said. Doctors said it's likely that Demetrice will make a fully recovery.

With news video.