(WALB) – A volunteer firefighter in Arkansas rushed to the rescue after a little girl fell out of the back of a moving bus.
Ryan Ciampoli, a licensed EMT and volunteer firefighter, was driving down the highway Friday when the back door of a bus flung open.
Hanging on to the door was a 4-year-old girl.
“I saw it happening, and it blew my mind. It was like I wasn’t even seeing what I was seeing,” Ciampoli said.
The girl fell to the pavement, and the bus continued to drive away.
Ciampoli immediately went into action.
The girl was unconscious at first, Ciampoli says, but she started to wake up when he approached her.
Ciampoli picked the 4-year-old up and carried her off the road where they laid her on a truck bed in a nearby parking lot. He got to work keeping her conscious and checking her vitals.
“Then the shock kicked in in her little body, and she started kicking and screaming and ‘Where’s my mommy?’ and things like that. Stuff like that is really heartbreaking,” Ciampoli said.
It took about five minutes for paramedics to arrive on the scene and transport the child to the hospital.
The girl’s mother says her daughter has a broken jaw and will need surgery, but she is expected to be OK.
Ciampoli says he was in the right place at the right time, and he urges everyone to take a first responder class for situations just like this one.
Watch the video HERE››
