A 4-year-old boy died in January after he accidentally inhaled a drawing pin. Now, more than a month after the incident, the child's mother has spoken out to warn other parents about how to avoid a similar tragedy.

Ayla Rutherford, who lives in Graham, Washington, urged parents to keep all thumbtacks hidden away from their children, The Sun UK reported.

The woman said, on the day of the tragedy, she was stepping into the shower when she heard her family members screaming. When she went to check on them, she found her 29-year-old husband performing the Heimlich maneuver on their boy, Axel.

However, Axel lost consciousness and turned blue, following which they rushed him to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma.

The doctors checked him and found he had inhaled a common household drawing pin, which had pierced through his left lung. The child was unable to breathe and was kept on life support. After a week, on Jan. 17, the child died.

"This was freak accident. All I want to do is prevent other people going through what we have to go through. I want to let people know that [pins are] such a normal thing to have in your house - to hang up posters, picture frames, Christmas lights, calendars," the mother of the boy said, The Sun UK reported.

"Everybody uses them and all it takes is for one little kid to pick it up, put it in their mouth, inhale it and puncture their lungs. If you have pins around the house, throw them out or lock them up. It's not worth your child's life or the pain. Me and my husband held Axel as he passed away. He was four years old, one month and four days old. I don't want anybody to have to go through this."

Rutherford explained: "We thought my kid was choking - he wasn't breathing. He was trying but he couldn't. I was crying and screaming. My mother-in-law called 911 and my husband kept trying to get whatever it was out of [Axel's] mouth. We thought he was choking."

"We've dealt with [choking] before when they're babies. You get it out and it's fine, but my son lost consciousness and he was turning blue. My husband and father-in-law immediately started CPR."

At the hospital, a scan revealed the child had a thumbtack wedged "between his ribs."

"They had to do a tracheotomy and cut a hole in his throat to get it out. They eventually got it out and it was just a regular size thumbtack," The Sun UK quoted Rutherford as saying said. "This is a kid who never put things in his mouth. It was the first time."

"The doctors pretty much told us that because he was without oxygen for so long and went into cardiac arrest five times, he wasn't going to come back from that," Rutherford said. "They told us not to hope, but we did anyway."

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