Mother, doctor pulls over and pulls children out of overturned school bus

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Moments after a Jefferson County Public School bus hydroplaned and overturned off Interstate-64 while on its way to duPont Manual High School, several drivers pulled off the highway to help.

Among the first on scene was Dr. Corrie Harris, who was just seconds behind the bus as she was carpooling her son and five of his friends to Manual.

”I’m driving my son and his friends down to high school and we’re on 64 and I see a bus on the side of the road, turned over,” Harris said.

Harris, a pediatrician, told WAVE News she pulled over to the shoulder of the highway, told her son and his friends to stay in the car and ran into action.

”It looked like a top hatch of the bus had probably come open,” Harris said. “So it was on the side and we could see there was an opening, but it was in this big bush and trees and brush. So we just kind of pushed our way through the brush and then jumped into the hatch to look at the kids. And we could see it was just chaotic. A lot of kids were bleeding, but they were all conscious.”

While Harris and another driver worked to pull the students out of the bus, she said a swarm of others emerged to help; a bit of humanity as time stopped briefly in its tracks.

”There was so many people,” Harris said. “I think every car going by stopped, because people were coming and helping to get the kids out and helping them call their parents and giving them a hug and it was pretty amazing.”

First responders eventually arrived and transported the students to several area hospitals. A Norton Healthcare spokesperson said all the students have since been discharged.

Harris eventually dropped her son and his friends at school a little bit late. She didn’t go to work Tuesday either.

But she did spend time thinking about what she saw earlier that morning, and how much worse things could’ve been when she peered into the bus’s front windshield.

“It was impressive,” Harris said. “There was clearly people who are medically trained there trying to help, as well as just people who were hugging the kids. And I feel thankful for that, and lucky.”

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