Tyler Legacy students recall experience of taking over school bus, avoiding crash

Published 5:30 pm Saturday, January 15, 2022

From left, Tyler Legacy High School students Cooper Cordell, Alexander Vazquez and Grace Von Eschenbach.

Tyler Legacy High School students’ quick thinking stopped a school bus from crashing earlier this week.

A group of students teamed together to pull over their school bus as their driver began to experience a medical emergency behind the wheel Thursday.



The driver had just picked up students from the Career and Technology Center when students started to notice something was wrong. The students described the driver as running a red light, hitting a couple curbs and nearly hitting a pole.

According to Tyler ISD, after leaving the CTC and turning onto Loop 323, students saw their driver drift into the median.

Tyler Legacy senior Alexander Vazquez made the big step of heading to the front of the bus after seeing his classmates go into panic mode.

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Vazquez said he was sitting in the fourth row of the bus on his phone with his AirPods headphones in his ears when he heard the panic underway around him.

“I heard people screaming, ‘someone help her,’ ‘someone get the wheel.’ I didn’t know what was happening so I asked my friend, ‘What’s going on?’ and they told me the bus driver was frozen or stuck. Then I overheard again, ‘someone get the wheel, someone get the wheel’ so I went up there,” Vazquez said.

Vazquez said he saw the fear his classmates had and since no one had stepped up just yet, he decided to take the initiative and grab the wheel.

Video from the bus incident shows Vazquez wearing a black hoodie and heading to the front of the bus as soon as students started to notice something was wrong with the bus driver.

“I put my foot and slowed down the bus. The lady (driver) was speaking but she couldn’t speak real good. She said she had it and slowed the bus little by little,” Vazquez said. “She was stiff and wasn’t reacting but she was kinda trying to turn the wheel to the left. Her body movement would go to the left so I grabbed the wheel and straightened it so it would go straight.”

As Vazquez took over the steering wheel, fellow student Grace Von Eschenbach rushed from the back of the bus to help with the wheel. Once Vazquez had the wheel stable, Von Eschenbach was able to focus on making sure the bus driver was OK.

“I looked up at her face in the mirror and could just tell she wasn’t there and wasn’t aware of what she was doing. I just immediately went and helped her to try to figure out what was going on and get her to stop driving,” Eschenbach said, noting she was worried at the time the driver could’ve been having a stroke. Von Eschenbach has been part of the CTC’s medical program since sophomore year and credits her training education to her reaction during the bus incident.

Eschenbach recalling focusing on getting the driver’s hands off the wheel, but noted the driver was reluctant to let go.

“I didn’t pay attention to what everybody else was doing, I just focused on her and thought about the fact that this could get way worse,” she said. “‘Just stop the bus,’ like that’s all you could do, ‘just stop the bus’ was kind of all that I was thinking the whole time.”

Together, the students were able to safely pull the bus over.

Meanwhile, some called 911, including sophomore Cooper Cordell.

“I told them that our bus had run a red light, and then our bus driver just didn’t seem all there, they might be having some medical issues,” Cordell told CBS19. “And then she told me to stay calm.”

Cordell also checked the driver’s medical state, using his Boy Scout training.

“You have them lift up both their arms, and they should be able to lift both their arms equal height, as well as you should get them to say a sentence because people having a stroke tend to have slurred words,” Cordell told CBS19.

Vazquez said as he loaded onto the bus from the CTC, he had noticed the driver wasn’t acting as friendly and happy as she usually was.

“I always get on that bus when we go back to campus and she’s always smiling and happy,” he said. “She didn’t say hi to anybody this time; she didn’t say anything.”

The students now are just thankful no one was hurt in a situation that could’ve quickly escalated into disaster.

“Our students were truly everyday heroes,” Legacy High Principal Dr. Kristen Walls said in a press release from Tyler ISD. “I really appreciate all their help in keeping everyone on the bus safe.”

More details of the incident state once the bus stopped, an off-duty EMT came to assist the driver while other bus drivers radioed to see if the driver was OK, pulled over to help render aid and helped with traffic control.

“In addition to the incredible job of our Tyler ISD students, I want to commend our other bus drivers in the convoy,” Tyler ISD Director of Transportation John Bagert said. “If more than one bus is running the same route, they travel in convoys, which allows for assistance in an unforeseen situation, like this medical emergency.”

The school district said the driver is currently home and resting. Students are set to be recognized at an upcoming school board meeting, according to Tyler ISD.