Bettye Windom and her sister Beth have been hailed heroes after saving passengers from a burning school bus.
The sisters, from Mississippi, were driving behind a Claiborne County school bus yesterday on Highway 28, Copiah County when they noticed it was giving off black smoke.
“We saw the school bus, and it was smoking real bad, and we knew we had to get those kids out of the bus,” Bettye told news outlet WAPT.
“(Beth) started flagging them down. It took us probably a mile to get them to pull over,” Bettye said. “We were running on the side of the bus and we had the flashers on.
“We were honking and screaming. My sister was out of the vehicle, out the window, screaming at him [the bus driver]. We finally got in front of them and slammed on brakes to get them to get out of the bus.”
Beth and Bettye, together with the driver of the bus, managed to get the children out minutes before the bus went up in flames, according to reports from WAPT.
One student injured her shoulder getting off the bus but other than that, none of the passengers were seriously injured.
At the time of the accident, the twenty-two students, three chaperones and the bus driver were on their way back from Ellisville, where the students had taken a state test.
WLOX.com – The News for South Mississippi
