Teen Led Others to Safety After Missouri Bus Crash
Aug-10-2010

A survivor from a fatal school bus crash in Missouri said today that one teen on board the wrecked bus may have saved lives.

Audrey Hofherr, 16, said students began to panic as the bus filled with the smell of diesel fuel in the moments after the crash Thursday. But Hofherr said 16-year-old Megan Fleming sprang to action instead and led her classmates to safety.

"She was amazing," Hofherr said of Fleming on ABC's "Good Morning America." "She got everybody calm. She got us all organized so that we could get off the bus, and we wouldn't have been able to get off without her."

Two people were killed Thursday when two school buses filled with high school students slammed into a wreck in front of them on a highway in Missouri. The students, from John F. Hodge High School in St. James, Mo., were on their way to Six Flags.

Jessica Brinker, 16, died in the crash. Hofherr, a friend of Brinker's, told ABC that the teen was "extremely brilliant" and said she was "just one of those people that lit up the room."

Daniel Schatz, 19, was also killed when one of the buses rammed into his pickup truck and then crashed on top of the vehicle, Highway Patrol Cpl. Jeff Wilson told The Associated Press. Schatz was a walk-on quarterback at the University of Missouri.

His father, Dave Schatz, is a Republican state House candidate in Missouri. He said the family's faith will help them deal with their grief. "I will see him again. As Christians, we have that belief, and that's all we can cling to," Schatz told KTVI/FOX2 in Missouri.

Kolby Griffith, a student on one of the buses, said he tried to help as well.

"We all just played our role," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I was trying to get everyone away from the bus because I could smell gas."

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, which has given new life to an ongoing debate over whether school buses should provide seat belts, though it's not yet clear whether Brinker would have survived if she had been wearing one.

Posted by Clay Kohut at 12:00 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print