Mississippi school kids stop school bus on highway after driver passes out | Mississippi

Middle school students in Mississippi took immediate action to prevent their school bus from crashing when their driver passed out on the highway, prompting the operator to say: “They saved my life.”

The bus in question had just left Hancock Middle School in Kiln, Mississippi, on Wednesday when driver Leah Taylor suffered an asthma attack and lost consciousness.

Students on the bus took action, and 12-year-old sixth-grader Jackson Casnave took the wheel after noticing the bus starting to swerve. “I didn’t have time to process my emotions,” Casnave said Associated Press. “I wanted to make sure no one got hurt.”

Another sixth-grader, Darrius Clark, tried to help by applying the brakes as the bus accelerated. “And then he passed out again, and then the bus started to slide forward and, you know, start to accelerate, so I didn’t know they had air brakes – so when I hit the brakes, it almost threw me out the windshield,” Clark said. in question.

The two students managed to slow down the bus, maneuver it towards the median and park it. Clark’s 13-year-old sister, Kayleigh, called 911 and said she could barely hear the operator because so many students were screaming. “I was scared,” he recalled. “But I also had to help.”

Yet another student, 15-year-old Destiny Cornelius, tried to help and saw Taylor holding a nebulizer. Cornelius used this on the driver. McKenzy Finch, 13, held Taylor’s head and picked up Taylor’s ringing phone and told the school district what happened.

Emergency responders quickly arrived and helped Taylor, who said he was now free of the emergency. The students were recognized for their work at the school’s pep rally on Friday.

“I’m proud of them,” Taylor said. “I couldn’t want any of my students on my bus other than my own, I love each of them very much.

“I will think about how they saved my life.”

Associated Press contributed reporting