‘You’re our hero’: Florida school bus driver protects students caught in shootout
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (WFLA) — A school bus driver is being hailed a hero for her efforts to keep kids safe when the bus got caught in the crossfire of a shooting.
“All I know is to get down and save my babies. I had 30 babies on there,” the driver, Carole Houston, told WTLV.
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Houston was a year into her job driving the bus for a K-12 private school when the unthinkable happened. As she drove into an apartment complex to drop off students, bullets started flying past the bus.
“When I got to the first dumpster on the entrance side, bullets just started flying,” Houston said.
A bullet went straight through the windshield as she told the children to duck for cover.
“I finished hearing the bullets. I got up myself and told them to stay down and I got back in the driver seat. It was glass all over the seat, but I wanted to make sure my babies were safe, so getting them out of harms way was my biggest thing,” Houston told WTLV. “So I got back in the driver seat and got to a safer spot.”
Houston’s boss described the horrifying phone call she received from the driver.
“She was like, ‘Ms. Toni, they shot my bus. I got a bullet hole in the front of my bus’,” Meltonia Wright said. “It was just horrific. It was just horrible. It was just too much. I would have never seen this coming.”
Wright and the parents of the students on the bus that day are calling Houston a hero.
“She’s our hero. I tell her that. You’re our hero, you saved my babies, and I couldn’t ask for nothing more from you. I’m very grateful Ms. Houston saved our kids,” Wright told WTLV.
Houston said she feels relieved after getting through the terrifying situation, “just knowing that many lives were in my hands and I did the best I could to make sure all of them were safe.”
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