Fifth grader rushes to hit school bus brake after driver passes out in Ohio. ‘I had to’

Fifth grader Sujaan Singh was riding on a school bus in Ohio when he noticed something was wrong.

“I saw the bus driver coughing a lot and twitching his hands and he passes out,” Sujaan told WJW, adding that the bus was about to crash.

“So I got up and moved his leg and hit the brake,” he told the station. “I knew I had to do this to save my life and save other people or everybody could have died, including me. So I had to do it.”

His “heroic efforts” on Thursday, March 17 were praised by Twinsburg City School District Superintendent Kathryn Powers.

He “recognized that the driver was having an emergency,” Powers in an email obtained by the Akron Beacon Journal. “He jumped into action, hitting the brake of the school bus. The bus jumped a curb before stopping short of hitting a streetlight.”

Video obtained by WKYC shows the bus up on a curb, near a park bench, stopped right in front of a tree.

Sajann said he tried to wake his bus driver, who was passed out, and the driver eventually regained consciousness, according to WEWS.

“Everybody was like, ‘Ahh!,’ screaming … and Sujaan was all calm,” friend Dennis Dortch told WEWS. “He told everybody to calm down. He told everybody to get off the bus.”

Another student then called 911, WEWS reported.

Reminderville police and fire officials were called to the scene, WKYC reported, and the driver was taken to a hospital. His updated condition has not been made available.

“It’s one of those situations that could have been horrible but we have a hero that came out of it,” Reminderville Police Lt. Jamie Siegfried told WJW. “It’s amazing. Sujaan did an amazing job. He got the bus to stop before a crash happened.”

Reminderville is about 25 miles southeast of Cleveland.

This story was originally published March 21, 2022 at 10:26 AM with the headline "Fifth grader rushes to hit school bus brake after driver passes out in Ohio. ‘I had to’."