Quick Thinking Pryor Teens Stop School Bus

Two Pryor teenagers are being praised for their quick thinking after their school bus driver passed out from a heart condition. <br/><br/>They hadn't had any training for this kind of emergency, but

Wednesday, September 20th 2006, 10:08 am

By: News On 6

Two Pryor teenagers are being praised for their quick thinking after their school bus driver passed out from a heart condition.

They hadn't had any training for this kind of emergency, but as News on 6 reporter Steve Berg tells us, officials say it's like they had.

It's a typical bus ride home from school; the driver makes small talk with the kids. Some of them bounce around on the seats. Suddenly, sophomore Josh Marlin says things turned serious. "We had just shut the doors and took off going and I noticed that he had started to veer off the road a little bit."

Josh says the driver was slumped over with his hands at his sides, no longer on the wheel. "So I stopped the bus and opened the doors and had all the little kids off and away from the road, and I hollered at my best friend Tate." 10th grader Tate Green: "I told the paramedic where we were at, what our situation was, and he asked me well I need you to go up there and check on his breathing."

Josh quickly instructs the other kids to exit the bus. Then even as he tends to the bus driver, he spots a car driving past and tells someone to flag them down. From the time the driver loses consciousness to the time the last student exits the bus, just 32 seconds.

Junior High School principal Terry Gwartney: "If we were to be able to make a video of what, not just teenagers, but even us were to do in an emergency situation, the kids pretty much followed it just like you'd want to draw it up, so they did a fantastic job."

Unfortunately, there may not be anything anyone can do for the driver, whose name we're not using at the request of the family. But officials tell us he's still unresponsive at a Tulsa hospital.

Josh Marlin: "I'm just still praying for him and hope he gets better soon."

Josh says he has a couple of relatives who are nurses, but says he's never had any special instruction on what to do in emergency situations. He says he just remembers feeling a lot of adrenaline.