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Quick-thinking teen averts bus disaster

With the driver unconscious after a crash, she stopped the bus from rolling into traffic.

By S.I. ROSENBAUM and ANDREA CHANG
Published August 12, 2006

RUSKIN - Fourteen-year-old Mariela Hernandez had never driven a car before, let alone a bus.

But when a milk truck struck the school bus she was riding in Friday, knocking her driver unconscious, she knew what to do.

The brake was the "big one," she remembered from driving with her father.

"I just got up and then I just ran straight because the bus still kept on going," she said. "I just left my foot on the brake. Just kept it there."

The quick reaction kept the bus from rolling into oncoming traffic, authorities said.

The bus was on County Line Road going to Beth Shields Middle School when the crash occurred. No one was seriously hurt.

Hillsborough sheriff's Deputy C. Whitehead was following the bus on his way to the Manatee County sheriff's training center to take a class.

He saw the Velda Farms milk truck strike the bus on the driver's side as the bus tried to make a U-turn.

The milk truck veered into the woods, he said. The bus kept moving, slowly, drifting into the opposite lane. He saw children "flailing their arms and yelling" from the back door.

Then the bus stopped.

"The girl, thank God, she put her foot on the brake," he said.

Whitehead drove around the bus and parked his cruiser in front of it, to keep traffic away.

He climbed into the bus through an open door. Then the bus started moving again. Whitehead said he thinks Mariela didn't know that if she took her foot off the brake the bus would start rolling.

Whitehead, who had never driven a bus before, jumped behind the wheel. As he tried to figure out how to put the bus in "park," it rolled into his cruiser.

Ten of the bus' 13 passengers, ages 11 through 14, were treated at hospitals for minor injuries, school district spokesman Steve Hegarty said.

The bus driver, Theresa Dowd, and the milk truck driver, Benwayne Morrison, were also treated and released at Manatee Memorial Hospital, Hegarty said.

Mariela, who needed seven stitches in her forehead, said she'll skip the bus ride when she returns to school Monday.

"No, I want my mom to take me," she said. "For a week, probably."

Information from WTSP-Ch-10 was used in this report. S.I. Rosenbaum can be reached at srosenbaum@sptimes.com or 661-2442.

[Last modified August 12, 2006, 01:32:44]