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Bus Accidents and Crashes

Hero teens stop out-of-control bus after driver becomes unresponsive

Everett Merrill
(Bridgewater, N.J.) Courier News

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. —Two quick-thinking students at Somerset Vo-Tech averted a potential tragedy Wednesday morning on one of the busiest highways in Central Jersey.

Two students at Somerset Vo-Tech came to the aid of their bus driver Wednesday morning when he suffered a medical emergency.

While driving the students from North Plainfield, N.J. to the school in Bridgewater, the bus driver suffered an apparent medical emergency and became unresponsive. The students started shouting that he had missed the turnoff to the school.

The bus continued on Route 22, swerving until it finally slowed at a red light two miles past the campus.

That’s when Gavin Costello, 15, and Angelo Medina, 18, went into action. The North Plainfield residents who attend the school full time approached the bus driver, took his keys and opened the door to let the students out.

“When he missed the exit, I jumped up front and started giving him directions,” said Gavin, a freshman in the welding program. “He wouldn’t look up. He kept looking down and looking around.

“He couldn’t talk at all. I knew we would have to get him off the wheel. As it was happening, I wasn’t nervous.”

When the bus slowed at the red light in the middle of the highway, Gavin was able to put the bus in park and Angelo managed to get the driver's keys.

“I opened the door and told everyone to get off the bus,” Gavin said. “Angelo called 911.”

He said the students never really panicked during the ordeal, but Steven Merrill, a shared-time student at the school, said it was more like a “nervous excitement.”

“I thought we were going to crash,” he said. “If he (bus driver) kept driving, he was going to black out and crash. He wasn’t responding at all.

“Right after he missed the turn to the school, that’s when we were like, ‘What’s going on?'”

Bridgewater police officers arrived on the scene and the bus driver was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset in Somerville, N.J. All of the students were unharmed and the bus driver was in stable condition as he was transported from the scene.

Follow Everett Merrill on Twitter @mycentraljersey.

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