7th-graders stop school bus, call 911, and attempt CPR after driver passes out
This is a scary but impressive clip of some 13-year-olds saving the day after their school bus driver had a heart attack…
From CBS News…
(CBS News) A surveillance video caught two quick-thinking seventh graders saving the day Monday when their bus driver reportedly had a heart attack while driving in the small town of Milton, Wash., south of Seattle.
As the video shows, it was a normal bus ride for the middle schoolers, when suddenly the driver slumps back in his seat and releases the wheel. Jeremy Wuitschick, 13, was a few rows back.
“The bus driver was acting all funny, he’s shaking, his arms are flailing, his eyes are bulging and he’s making this weird rasping noises with his mouth,” Jeremy said… The bus was careening out of control, headed straight for a church. Jeremy said he acted on instinct.
“So I take action,” he said. “I grab the wheel, turn it right get it to the right side of the road. I take the keys out of the ignition, the engine starts turning off, and (we) start slowing down.”
Seventh grader Johnny Wood took action, too. He had studied CPR.
“I ran up and tried doing chest compressions, but his eyes were rolling back and I could tell it was getting harder for him to breathe,” Johnny said.
As the bus slowed and stopped, other students called 911.
Jeremy said, “I’m just thinking I just want to stop the bus, because I don’t want to crash and I don’t want to know what it feels like – I just don’t want to die.”
Jeremy said he remembered a superhero book he’d read in which a man stopped a runaway bus by turning off the ignition.
Everyone got off the bus alive.
Somewhere I read his status was ‘grave’. 🙁
If the driver was still breathing it was a bad idea to attempt CPR, but considering 7th graders, they did well.
Bus driver died. Ryan Callis, a 43-year-old father of three, never regained consciousness, his cousin, Reggie Green, of Tacoma, said Thursday.Callis died Wednesday at St. Francis Hospital in Federal Way, two days after an apparent heart attack incapacitated him while he was driving a 13-ton school bus to Surprise Lake Middle School.
What happened to the driver, anybody know?