A 13-year-old American schoolboy, a passenger on a bus full of students, managed to avoid a potentially tragic accident by stopping the vehicle whose driver had passed out at the wheel, local officials said on Thursday.
Little Dillon Reeves “jumped out of his seat, threw his backpack, ran to the front of the bus, grabbed the steering wheel and managed to stop the bus in the middle of the road”, said Robert Livernois, head of public schools in this district in the State of Michigan, during a press conference.
The bus driver, who was bringing home about sixty students from Carter College in the town of Warren, north of Detroit, on Wednesday, suddenly “lost consciousness” at the wheel, he said in a statement the day before.
“Little Hero”
In a video released by the authorities, we can indeed see the driver feeling bad and fainting, then the schoolboy taking control of the steering wheel, appearing to press the brake and managing to stop the bus despite the panic and in the middle of the cries of frightened children.
He yells at his classmates “to call the [s secours] immediately “. The emergency services and the police then took charge of the driver who was hospitalized and is now in stable condition, according to CNN.
The reaction of this student “made all the difference”, underlined Robert Livernois. Dillon Reeves made it possible “to avoid what could have been a very tragic accident”, for his part greeted a city councilor, Jonathan Lafferty, on Facebook. His emotional parents, Steve and Ireta Reeves, praised their son during the press conference, calling him a “little hero.”