Students Save Bus After Driver Suffers Asthma Attack
Middle school students in Mississippi acted swiftly to prevent a potential crash when their bus driver lost consciousness on a highway. The bus had just departed Hancock Middle School in the Kiln community on Wednesday when driver Leah Taylor experienced an asthma attack and passed out.
Students aged 12 to 15 took immediate action. Sixth-grader Jackson Casnave, 12, noticed the bus beginning to swerve and grabbed the steering wheel to regain control.
"I didn’t have time to process my emotions," Casnave said. "I just wanted to make sure that nobody got hurt."
Another sixth-grader, Darrius Clark, tried to assist by pressing the brakes as the bus accelerated. Clark recounted the experience:
"And then, so she passed out again and then the bus started rolling forward, and I mean it started gaining speed so I didn’t know it had air brakes – so when I clicked the brakes it about threw me out the windshield," Clark said.
Together, Casnave and Clark managed to slow the bus, steer it into the median, and bring it to a stop. Clark’s sister, 13-year-old Kayleigh, called 911 despite the chaos on board.
"I was scared," Kayleigh Clark recalled. "But also I had to help."
Fifteen-year-old Destiny Cornelius found that Taylor was holding a nebulizer and used it to assist the driver. Meanwhile, 13-year-old McKenzy Finch supported Taylor by holding her head and answering the driver’s ringing phone to inform the school district about the emergency.
Emergency responders arrived promptly and provided aid to Taylor, who has since recovered from the incident. The students were honored for their quick thinking and bravery during a school pep rally on Friday.
"I’m very proud of them," Taylor said. "I couldn’t ask for any of my other students than my students on my bus. I love every single one of them.
"I’m gonna think of how they saved my life."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
