‘His head went down’: a Pennsylvania sophomore on the moment her school bus started moving again as students prepared to get off

A pair of Pennsylvania teens in Hollidaysburg, a town about 90 miles east of Pittsburgh, helped bring a rolling school bus to a halt in September after their driver suffered a medical emergency. According to ABC News, sophomore Alexis Smith and classmate Skyla Horton acted once they saw something was wrong, and the Hollidaysburg Area School District later put out surveillance video of the moment.

The footage shows the bus slowing while riders gathered their things to get off, then creeping forward again. Horton was among the students due to step off. “I thought maybe we were just going around the corner again,” she said. Smith says a friend flagged that the driver seemed to be in trouble. “A couple students got off, maybe like two or three and then he slowly started drifting forward. And then his head went down,” she said.

Smith is then seen leaving her seat and hurrying to the front. She says she struck a metal pole while stepping on the brake. Horton says she engaged the parking brake and swung the door open “for more airflow for the bus driver.”

A pulse check and a radio call

They also called for help over the radio and felt for the driver’s pulse. The district publicly praised Smith’s “heroism,” saying she took immediate action by “safely bringing the bus to a stop, using the radio to call for emergency help and assessing the driver’s pulse and respiration until medical responders arrived.” The district added, “We are thankful for her quick thinking and courage.”

Superintendent Curtis Whitesel said the students’ quick actions helped “avoid what could have been a serious accident,” and that the driver can drive again after being cleared. Other students also pitched in, including one who called 911 and one who used the bus radio, Local 12 reports. Smith says the man is her regular driver and now jokes with her when she gets on. “Our hero,” she says he tells her.

Emergencies like this are one reason health checks and basic first aid get attention. Under federal rules for commercial drivers, a driver must have been medically examined and certified as qualified within the preceding 24 months, with shorter intervals in some cases.

For bystanders, the American Red Cross says that when a person does not respond, the first step is to call 911 or ask someone nearby to do it. The group describes Hands-Only CPR as CPR without rescue breaths. Its steps, aimed at people who are not trained in full CPR, say to place the heel of one hand in the center of the chest with the other hand on top, then to push “hard and fast (at least 2 inches; 100 to 120 compressions per minute).”