WATCH: Hero teens stop out-of-control school bus on Route 22
“He couldn’t talk at all. I knew we would have to get him off the wheel. As it was happening, I wasn’t nervous.”
Several quick-thinking students at Somerset Vo-Tech averted a potential tragedy Wednesday morning on one of the busiest highways in Central Jersey..
At approximately 7:35, while driving the students from North Plainfield to the school in Bridgewater, the bus driver suffered an apparent medical emergency and became unresponsive. The students started shouting that he had missed the turnoff to the school from Route 22 West.
The bus, with 27 students on board, continued to travel west on Route 22, swerving until it finally slowed at a red light at Country Club Road, two miles past the campus.
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That’s when Gavin Costello, 15, Angelo Mel-Tos, 18, and Kala Wright went into action. The North Plainfield residents who attend the school full time approached the bus driver and quickly decided to take away his keys and open the door to let the students out.
“When he missed the exit, I jumped up front and started giving him directions,” said Gavin, a freshman in the Welding program. “He wouldn’t look up. He kept looking down and looking around.
“He couldn’t talk at all. I knew we would have to get him off the wheel. As it was happening, I wasn’t nervous.”
When the bus slowed at the red light in the middle of the highway Gavin was able to put the bus in park, and Angelo managed to get the driver's keys.
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“I told everyone to get off the bus,” Gavin said.
Angelo and some other students called 911.
Kala, a freshman in the Law and Public Safety program at Vo-Tech, who was named student of the month for January, remained calm during the ordeal, according to her mother, Valerie Wright.
"She (Kala) called me from the bus and all I heard was kids yelling, 'Stop the bus, stop the bus,'" Valerie said. "I was a nervous wreck, freaking out, but she was as cool as a cucumber.
"She grabbed the lever and opened the door of the bus. It's so up her alley."
Gavin said the students never really panicked during the ordeal, but Steven Merrill, a shared-time student at the school, said it was more like a “nervous excitement.”
“I thought we were going to crash,” he said. “If he (bus driver) kept driving, he was going to black out and crash. He wasn’t responding at all.
“Right after he missed the turn to the school, that’s when we were like, ‘What’s going on?'”
Bridgewater police officers arrived on the scene and the bus driver was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset in Somerville. All of the students were unharmed and the bus driver was in stable condition as he was transported from the scene.
"These are very focused students with a can-do attitude," said Somerset Vo-Tech Superintendent of Schools Chrys Harttraft. "We are certainly proud of them."
Staff Writer Everett Merrill: 908-243-6606; emerrill@mycentraljersey.com