‘They saved my life’: Mississippi bus driver blacks out on a four-lane highway. The 40 kids on board did something no adult told them to do

A Mississippi school bus driver blacked out during an asthma attack while driving on a four-lane highway, and the students on board stepped in to stop a crash. The driver, Leah Taylor, 46, was driving away from Hancock Middle School in Hancock County when the incident happened. There were about 40 kids on the bus at the time.

As Taylor reached for her medication, she suddenly lost consciousness behind the wheel, causing the bus to veer off course and begin swerving across the road. Panic quickly spread among the students as the vehicle drifted out of its lane and the situation turned dangerous in seconds. Sitting directly behind her, 12-year-old sixth grader Jackson Casnave immediately realised something was wrong. 

Without hesitating, he sprang from his seat, rushed to the front, and grabbed the steering wheel to help steady the bus. At the same time, he shouted for his classmates to call for help, helping prevent what could have been a far more serious accident.”I didn’t have time to process my emotions,” Casnave said, as per NBC News. “I just wanted to make sure that nobody got hurt.”

These middle schoolers stayed calm, acted fast, and showed real character when it mattered most

Another sixth grader, Darrius Clark, 12, came to Casnave’s aid by hitting the brakes, bringing the bus to a stop on the median. Darrius’s 13-year-old sister, Kayleigh Clark, was at the back of the bus and ran to the front to call 911. “I was scared, but also I had to help,” she said. Mississippi has seen its share of unusual incidents lately, including a former funeral director who turned a storage unit into a casket warehouse.

The students didn’t stop there. Destiny Cornelius, a 15-year-old eighth grader, spotted a nebulizer on the bus and used it to give Taylor her medication. At the same time, 13-year-old McKenzy Finch held Taylor’s head steady and picked up her ringing phone to inform the district’s transportation team about what was happening.

When Taylor finally came to, she was grateful to the students who had helped her. “They’re the ones that saved my life and everybody else’s on that bus,” she said. The state has also made headlines for stranger stories, like a man who flooded the Mississippi River to keep his wife away so he could drink with friends.

The students were honored at a school pep rally on Friday, and they will be taken out for a special lunch at a restaurant of their choice the following week. School principal Dr. Melissa Saucier praised the students for how they handled the situation. “What they did took courage,” Saucier said. “They didn’t wait for somebody to step in; they stepped up themselves, and that says a lot about their character.”