Texas cheerleader jumps off parade float to save choking toddler

Tyra Winters (right) with a member of her cheerleading squad. Photo / Facebook

A heroic Texas cheerleader on her homecoming parade float sprang into action when she spotted a toddler choking in the crowd.

Tyra Winters, 17, was on the Rockwall High School cheerleading squad's parade float last month when she heard people saying a child was choking in the crowd, she told ABC News.

She scanned the crowd and spotted a little boy whose face was "super, super red" and "kind of turning purple".

Winters jumped off the float and ran to the boy, who was with his mother, and successfully performed the Heimlich manoeuvre.

"I picked him up and I tilted him downwards and gave him two or three back thrusts. He then was spitting everything up," Winters said.

The boy's mother, Nicole Hornback, told ABC News she tried to perform the Heimlich on her son, Clarke, 2, but was unsuccessful.

"I just was holding him out and running through the crowd trying to hand him off to anyone," Hornback said.

The mother hailed the cheerleader as "very brave".

Winters said she is thankful her mother taught her the Heimlich a few years ago.

The three reunited, but the toddler didn't remember Winters.

"It's hard for him because he's so young," she said. "He doesn't even remember what he ate for breakfast."