Philadelphia Teen Saves Fellow Students from Bus Accident
One remarkable Philadelphia area teen may have very well saved the life of a about a dozen of her classmates on Tuesday afternoon. Graceann Rumer, a 17-year-old senior at the Calvary Christian Academy in Northeast Philadelphia grabbed the wheel of her school bus and pulled her fellow students to safety after her bus driver collapsed from a heart attack.
“I just realized that there’s no one driving this bus… I need to do something,” Rumer told reporters. Her bus driver Charles Duncan, a 51-year-old Philadelphia area man tragically collapsed and died from the heart attack while behind the wheel of his bus around 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday. With Duncan unconscious and obstructing the brake pedal, Rumer, who had only had her driver’s license for about two weeks before the incident, quickly grabbed the wheel of the moving bus and slowly made a U-turn to change direction and eventually bring it to a steady halt.
Graceann was able to get control of the bus even though Duncan was obstructing the brake pedal. Thinking quickly, she was able to grab the parking lever in order to put the bus in park to fully stop it. Alarmingly, the bus was headed straight for oncoming traffic before Graceann took the wheel to turn it around and would have caused a serious accident.
Not only may Grace have saved her fellow students, but she may have also saved pedestrians and several other motorists who were on the road at the time from suffering debilitating injury as well.
Graceann, who usually drives her own car to and from school for practice these days, has stated that she was simply the licensed driver closest to the front of the bus at the time. Nonetheless, Graceann’s chance decision to take the bus home from school on Tuesday and her quick actions may have been a miracle for many as she undoubtedly prevented what could have been a terrible accident.
