A 7th grader is being praised for stopping a school bus full of children after the driver lost consciousness on Wednesday in Warren, Michigan.
Police say the quick actions of Dillon Reeves saved the lives of 60+ students and the driver, who passed out while the bus veered into oncoming traffic.
The incident was captured on surveillance video inside the bus.
The bus driver used her ball cap to fan herself before contacting a dispatcher to say she was feeling ill and about to pull the bus over.
“I’m feeling really dizzy and I have to pull over,” the driver said. Seconds later, she appeared to suffer a seizure and took her hands off the wheel.
7th grader Dillon Reeves noticed the bus driver was in distress and leaped into action. He rushed to the front of the bus and grabbed the wheel and the brake to bring the bus to a complete stop.
He then told students to call 911. “Someone call 911, now!” he shouted. “Someone should call 911. I don’t care! Someone call 911.”
Dillon, a student at Lois E. Carter Middle School in Warren, was praised for his quick thinking.
“I could not be prouder of his efforts,” Warren Consolidated Schools Superintendent Robert D. Livernois said in a news conference Thursday. “The Warren Police and Fire Departments responded very quickly, tended to the driver, and the students were safely loaded onto a different bus to make their way home.”
Livernois continued: “He had the wherewithal to push [the brake] slowly, likely in anticipation that the bus was full of passengers.”
The 40-year-old driver, whose name was not released, was awake and alert when medics arrived. She remains in the hospital undergoing testing and observation, Livernois said.
Watch the video below.
