Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: Shut That Door Again or You Don't Survive

Episode Date: January 4, 2025

Two students and a professor at Virginia Tech University manage to survive the April 16, 2007, massacre at the school. A Minneapolis school bus with 52 children plummets 45 feet when a bridge collapses in August 2007.  Cook Unity: - Go to cookunity.com/ISURVIVED or enter code ISURVIVED before checkout for 50% off your first week! 

Hi, iSurvive listeners. I'm Marisa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just want to remind you that episodes of iSurvived as well as the A&E Classic podcast Cold Case Files, City Confidential, and American Justice are all available ad free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show. This episode contains subject matter

that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. I was looking down the barrel of his gun, and at that point we made eye contact, and that was probably one of the scariest moments of my life. Real people. I couldn't get my seatbelt to release, and then all of a sudden the bus shifted a little more.

And then I got scared. I got really, really scared. Who faced death? Bang, bang, bang. And then all of a sudden one of those bangs hits you. Move with the force of the bullets. Just act like a rag doll and just hopefully he'll go away. And live to tell how.

You go into almost as good versus evil mode. You have to prevail. You go into almost as good versus evil mode. You have to prevail. You have to either shut that door again, or you don't survive. This is I Survived. It's April 2007 in Blacksburg, Virginia. Ishwar, a professor at Virginia Tech University,

arrives at his Norris Hall office. I came into work at about eight o'clock or so, or slightly before, as is my norm, and started working on a proposal I was writing. And while I was working on that proposal, there was a call that came in that there had been a double homicide on campus. Two students had been shot in a dormitory on campus.

It was quite startling because to have a homicide on a university campus is very unusual. My staff and I talked about this, we were shocked, but we felt that it was a police matter and then the police would essentially take care of things. The student gunman, Sung Hee Cho, remained at large. Unaware of the homicides, students, including Derek, arrived for classes in Norris Hall. I got there about five minutes before class started, and everything seemed pretty normal, nothing out of the ordinary.

I sat about six feet from the door or so, maybe two rows back from the door. So I had pretty much an easy eyeline to it. About 15 or 10 minutes into class, somebody came in, like sort of peeked their head and it's pretty common like a student looking for their class or getting lost but it seemed sort of out of the ordinary at first because it was halfway through the semester and everybody sort of knows where their classes are by now. And what really seemed sort of early out of the ordinary was when he

looked in the second time, which was probably like no more than five or ten seconds after he looked in the first. The gunman who had already killed two students was now in Norris Hall. He used chains to lock the main doors behind him. Colin was also in class in Norris Hall. Everything was perfectly normal. Nothing was going wrong until we heard a bunch of loud bangs. And the bangs we thought were from construction. There was a lot of construction going on in neighboring buildings. We honestly thought nothing of it.

The teacher, however, I think knew exactly immediately what that sound was. I remember looking at her face and her face just dropping. She went to the door, opened the door to look outside to see what was going on. And immediately she shut the door, told us to get on the ground underneath our desk and somebody call 911. And at that moment it was, you know, it's serious.

Something's very bad happening right now. On the second floor, Cho opened fire. There were a couple of faculty members who ran down the hallways. There was a secretary who was fired upon. When the secretary warned us about the gunshots right around the corner from us, I locked the door. But of course we have glass doors. So I suppose locking the door in a sense was

simply a security blanket. We were all quite aware that the doors were not particularly useful against an onslaught. Cho entered a classroom and shot the professor and 11 students. The first class that he went to was across the hall. We heard the initial shots, maybe 15 to 20 of them. No more than five seconds later, our door opened. The gunman entered our room. The first person he shot was our professor, who was in the front of the classroom.

That was like, just overwhelmingly just shocking, that our professor could fall that easily, that he was dead in almost an instant. That sent everybody into this sense of shock that nobody really knew what to do at that point. So everybody just sort of scrambled after that happened and just hoped for the best, I guess. Cho was armed with two semi-automatic pistols and over 400 rounds of ammunition. The gunman was probably about six feet away from me. He was still at the sort of entrance of the door and had a clear shot on pretty

much everybody in the class. I don't remember anything other than like the deafening sound of gunshots that sort of drowned out all of the screams. I think in my mind, it was just pretty much three part of the sound of gunshots over and over. He sort of swung the gun around to the side of the classroom I was on. At that point we made eye contact and that was probably one of the scariest moments of my life.

When he came into the class, I think he had a pretty well planned out system of how he would kill everybody. He shot the professor first and then shot whoever was closest to him. There was almost just a sort of emptiness in his face. Like you can look into somebody's eyes and sort of see like their expressions and how they're feeling. But with his, it wasn't really anger. It was just more methodical.

Like he was determined to do something. He was here for a reason and he was gonna try and kill as many of us as he could. He made eye contact with me and I was gonna try and kill me as he could. He made eye contact with me and I was looking down pretty much the gun, the barrel of his gun. It was slow motion in my mind, but in all it probably was less than like three seconds

that I had to react. I saw the bullet come out and at that point, like I slid under my desk so I thought I was safe, but the bullet went through my arm. I sort of scrambled for the back of the room. I put as much sort of desk and objects in the way of him and me as I could. And then after that, he walked into the other side of the room, not running, not sprinting, just calm, methodical, and then shot all the people over there.

11 of the 12 students in Derek's class were shot. The gunman left Derek's classroom and entered the hallway firing. After we had left our classroom, we heard more shots down the hallway. So all the gunshots were in a fairly close proximity to the class that we were in. We could tell that they weren't getting very much more distant than maybe 30 or 40 feet down the hall. I wasn't really thinking about anything else, just how in the world can I make it out of here alive?

Cho continued down the hall towards Ishwar's office. There were several students who work in my laboratory who were due in, and my first thought was of their safety. I contacted one on his cell phone. I asked him then to contact some of the other students and form a phone chain system. The noises were now becoming much more urgent down the hallway because the assassin

was making his way down the hall. I thought that it was time to call my wife. Honey, I'm in trouble. You're my spouse, to call my wife. Honey, I'm in trouble. You're my spouse. You're my partner. Maybe you should know I'm in a difficult situation. Let's see how this goes. The gunman approached Colin's classroom.

It was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then quiet. And then we heard them. It's again, much louder, much closer. I was the one who called 911 from the room. I don't remember why, I just, I pulled it out and got on the phone and just got underneath the desk with the operator. And then it was soon after that, that Joe entered our room.

I remember seeing the professor move towards the door as everyone went down to the ground. And then I turned and faced the back of the room from where I positioned and I don't know who exactly was hit first. The gunman first shot and killed Collins' professor. He then opened fire on students. Boom, boom, boom. And then it went quiet and then you could hear the clips change and him dropping clips

out. He seemed to be very, very familiar with his weapon and he was very quick with this changing of his clips. You could hear him walking around. He didn't say a word. No one else said a word in my room. There were a few screams when shots were fired, but there was no yelling, there was no communication. Colin and his classmates used their desks for cover.

I kind of jumped, dived out sideways, and we made it underneath the seat of one and kind of the table of another one. From the angle that he approached me, I was pretty much covered up. All of my main parts were only my extremities sticking out. I completely forgot about the phone that I was on at the current time with the police.

I remember when I was on the phone with her describing where I was, and then as soon as Joe entered the room, I didn't say a word. Obviously, I didn't want to be talking on the phone with this man in the room. And I remember hearing the operator on the other line still talking, and me doing all that I can to cover it up and not have that heard. I heard bang, bang, bang, bang, and then all of a sudden I felt the very sharp feeling in my leg.

And then in my hips, I felt the same kind of feeling. I thought that getting shot by a gun would have been the most excruciating pain that you could ever imagine, but I felt very, very numb. Colin was shot in the hip and leg, shattering his femur. When he shot me the first time, I actually threw the phone from my hand

and threw it out, so I was kind of reacting to the force of the bullet. And then it was quickly picked up by a girl next to me and then covered up. I heard bang, bang, bang again, and then a clip change, more gunshots, and then the door closed and he was out and he was gone. He was gone down the hallway.

Sixteen of the 17 students in Colin's class were shot. Colin's friend Christina was among the wounded. I looked over at another part of the room and saw Christina hunched in the corner, kind of like in the same position that you'd be in for a tornado drill or a hurricane drill against the wall, and she was sandwiched in by two other people who I don't know how to say this, but there were a lot more red than other people So I knew that there were people in in worse situations You could still hear him down the hallway when he was visiting other rooms again, but none of us moved.

We stayed where we were, and we didn't think he was gonna come back. At this point, a lot of the desks are overturned, or there's people in the aisles and backpacks and everything else. But it was just like the class had been emptied almost, but at the same time, there were still a lot of bodies there. And I just remember seeing the darkness of the darkness of like the gunpowder and gunshot

residue still like in the air. You can almost smell blood, like sort of that irony smell that goes along with blood. So there was a lot of it in our classroom. After the initial sort of getting over the shock and of what's actually happening, once you comprehend that, you definitely go into sort of this adrenaline-fueled survival mode. I realized after I had time to look down that my arm was bleeding and I could see,

like, I could feel the pain. I was able to sort of unzip my jacket and tie my belt around my arm as a tourniquet to sort of help stop the bleeding. And then with my other hand, I was able to sort of help stop the bleeding. And then with my other hand, I was able to sort of call 911 operator and sort of inform them on the situation. Derek and three classmates were injured but mobile.

I was pretty much the first one off the floor after he left our classroom and we heard more shots down the hall. So I figured there was time for me to make it up to the front of the classroom and sort of prevent them from getting back in. I was able to climb on top of the desk and make my way to the front of the classroom fairly quickly. Another person went around and checked everybody else to see if they were okay and sort of helped stop the bleeding. Then another person called for help out the windows and tried to look for something that

we could barricade the door with. The door was pretty flimsy. It wasn't like anything metal or anything else. It was just a typical wooden door. There wasn't anything in the class that was really feasible as far as pulling in front of the door and trying to hope that it wouldn't open again. We pretty much figured our best chance was just wedging

our feet in between the door and the base of the floor and hoping that that would hold as sort of a barricade. After we heard the gunshots down the hall, we sort of knew that the approximate time they took in our classroom that he'd probably taken those other classrooms as well. So we knew we had maybe a 30 second window to figure out what we would do next and try and make it out of there alive. Colin was shot twice and lying on the floor. Cho continued to shoot students in surrounding classrooms. You could still hear him down the hallway when he was visiting other rooms again, but none of us moved.

Just generally being very afraid he's going to come back, very afraid he's going to hear us. On his first trip to each of the rooms, he kind of suppressed everybody and put them down on the ground, make sure they weren't going to go anywhere. Then he more methodically went through each individual aisle. I remember looking at the windows and thinking about the windows as a possible way out. But there was no way that the windows would have worked. He would have been in our room too quickly and we would have all been standing up in front of the windows. It would have been a worse situation.

In some of the quiet moments, you know, with the dead silence that nobody's speaking, don't say anything, I do remember hearing cell phone vibrations going on in backpacks and just hearing those vibrate and nobody answering them or anything. They were just vibrating, get quiet again. The students were unaware the police had now surrounded Norris Hall. Three minutes into the episode, I saw the SWAT team running by my window. I could see a police officer behind a white pickup truck with his gun drawn pointing towards my window. I remember desperately thinking

that I want those police officers inside, not outside. Although injured, Derek and classmate Caitlin decided to hold the door shut. I was shot in my upper right arm through the bicep. And Caitlin was shot in her right hand. I think a piece of a bullet grazed her head. So she was bleeding from her hand and her head. And I was just bleeding from my arm.

She had her body forced up against near where the handle was. And I had my body sort of laid across the floor Pushing up with the up upper part of my body near where the hinges were You heard the last gunshots down the hall and all of a sudden like 10 seconds later Our door handles turning and the doors open about six inches and that was just terrifying mentally emotionally I mean you just suffered through probably one of the worst sights that you've ever seen in your life. And then to have that, the opportunity for that to happen again, and you'd be in such close range to the gunman that you probably wouldn't survive again. You go into almost as good versus evil mode and like you have to prevail, you have to either

shut that door again, or you don't survive. You probably won't make it out of there alive. With two kids, sometimes it feels like my whole day can be taken up by figuring out who needs to eat, what they need to eat, and when they need to eat it. And with all of that meal planning, I often forget that I need to eat too. That's what makes Cook Unity so great. Cook Unity has allowed me to reset my routine with an endless variety of vibrant healthy meals made by award-winning chefs. Their meals are all made in micro kitchens,

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crafted with local ingredients by award-winning chefs. Go to cookunity.com slash I survived or enter code I survived before checkout for 50% off your first week. That's 50% off your first week by using code I survived or going to cookunity.com slash I survived. On the Virginia Tech campus, a student gunman's rampage continues in Norris Hall. Derek and classmate Caitlin are using their bodies to hold their door shut. Then suddenly, the gunman is at the door.

And all of a sudden, our door handle is turning and the door is open about six inches. He was sort of forcing it with his shoulder so he wasn't able to really fire his gun at all. Caitlin and I sort of communicated without words. I think that helped because he wasn't really able to tell where we were through our voices. He just knew we were somewhere behind the door. I could see him through sort of that crack, narrow crack in the hinges and see what he was doing. He had on a black leather jacket over top of

sort of an ammo vest that he stored a lot of their magazines in. I knew that he was gonna fire into the door. At that point I wasn't really going to watch and see if I was going to die and watch the process that I was going to die. We backed our bodies up a lot, and tried to get out of the way of the bullets coming through.

And he stepped back and fired probably approximately three shots into the door. Fortunately, I don't think any of those bullets hit anybody. Most of the bullets were perpendicular to the door, so they either went out the windows or just hit the wall. Then we heard more gunshots down the hall, so we figured he wasn't still outside of our door. The initial gunshots were very violent. It was like a da-da-da-da-da-da sound. It was very sharp.

The very violent noise subsided, and it seemed to become much more deliberate. But it always seemed to come in pairs, da-da-da-da-da-da. Sang-hee Cho returned to Colin's classroom. On his first trip to each of the rooms, he kind of suppressed everybody and put them down on the ground, make sure they weren't going to go anywhere. Then he more methodically went through each individual aisle. Cho began shooting the injured students at point blank range. I remember hearing systematic boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

He had walked almost all the way to the back of the room, close to the windows, and then looped around to the front and come down close to the door side on our side to make kind of a U shape. Already shot twice, Colin was laying on the floor pretending to be dead. I caught one glimpse of him. I caught his boots, his pants. He was wearing a white shirt and he had a holster over each shoulder. And I never saw his face. And that's all I wanted to see. I'm glad I didn't get to look at him.

I think if I would have made eye contact with him, it would have been a more, I don't know, personal thing. I would just try to play dead and act like I wasn't there. The shots got a lot closer to where I was. I remember hearing them a lot louder. He was standing basically at my feet. Probably the scaredest I've ever been in my entire life was at that moment lying on the ground. You just hear bang, bang, bang,

and then all of a sudden one of those bangs hits you. I didn't want him to know that I was there. Just play dead. Move with the force of the bullets, just act like a rag doll, and just hopefully he'll go away. Colin was shot in the shoulder in Budock. Just waiting for it to be over, just saying, just please stop, please stop. I believe it was my limp body flailing around,

which made him believe that, you know, he got me with that one and he could move on. Police used shotguns to open the chained exterior doors and entered Norris Hall. It was a loud blast. So this is into the eighth minute. And at that time, all the noise subsided. And at that time, all the noise subsided. I saw the SWAT team running by my window, and there were now more police officers converging onto the building.

After we didn't hear any gunshots for maybe 30 seconds, we heard the police finally enter our hall, and we could hear them yelling, like, come out with your hands up, things like that. I sort of stuck my head outside the door and saw the police, like, all at the end of the hall. Their gun sort of focused down the hall and trying to figure out where he was. I heard police officers in the hallway. I heard them shout and it was very confusing because in the beginning the

shout said, well I found two in the bathroom. And I thought, well, perhaps there were two gunmen and they found the gunmen. There was another voice that said, I found two more, they're not saying much. And at that time, a sense of dread came over me. The police officers kept shouting, I found some here, I found some there,

and the sense of dread sort of increased. Colin had been shot four times and was lying face down on the floor. The gunman was still in Colin's classroom. I remember hearing his bullets, and then I remember hearing police outside. That's when I knew that you could hear them moving around outside, trying to get in the building somehow.

I heard his footsteps. I heard him moving around. I think I remember hearing him move towards the window and looking out the window. So he could obviously hear the police coming in, trying to get into the building. I thought that he was waiting, because it was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then quiet. So I thought he was waiting because it was it was it was just boom boom boom boom boom and then quiet So I thought he was waiting in front of our room and he was waiting for the police

After we heard the police outside of our hall and after I sort of peeked my head out I think we all sort of started to discuss whether we should try and make a run for it or not At this point the police are on the other end of the hall from where we heard the last gunshots fired So there's probably maybe 20 feet between us and the last gunshots fired, and 20 feet between us and the police. So it was sort of like we'd be caught in the middle if he came out of the room and started firing at the police. Colin was lying face down as police entered his classroom. As soon as the police came in the door, they opened it up.

They said, shoot her down, shoot her down immediately. And I was like, he's dead. How did this happen? I remember being shot and then hearing one or two more shots, and then it was the silence. Cho had shot himself in the head. He could obviously hear the police coming in, trying to get into the building, which is when he believed

that it was, you know, his run was over, it was time to go, and he killed himself. I knew that once the police were there that I was safe, that everything was okay. I was concerned that, I mean, we were all laying on the floor not moving around, that they, you know, wouldn't find someone that was alive. I remember telling them Christina was over there and she was alive, telling him Emily was there, they were alive, I was alive. And then I remember hearing them go through their triage and saying, this person is blue, this person is green,

this person is red. And then I hear this person's black, black tag, black tag, black tag. And then I heard black tag and I said, oh my God, that's like people that actually been killed. 33 people died and 23 more were injured in the Virginia Tech shootings. The student gunman Sung Hee Cho had a history of mental illness. The thought of the event comes up just about every day.

Something will spark the memory of it. Just to think about the classmates that I had at the time and then they're not here anymore, it makes me wonder why them and not me. In Colin's classroom, only five students survived. Colin made the first 911 call, which helped police locate the gunman. I believe he had all the cards in his hand. He was in complete control of the situation,

and he laid the cards down. Some were face up and some were face down, and I was one of the lucky ones. Colin returned to Virginia Tech to graduate. It's something that's happened in my life that was negative. And I'm just trying to turn that and not have that be something that defines who I am. Sung Hee Cho fired nearly 200 rounds before killing himself. The entire attack lasted less than 10 minutes. It's very difficult for a group of individuals

to overcome someone with automatic weapons who has planned clinically, who's brutal, who's lost rationality, who has no concern for his own safety. He's already made up his mind that he's going to be a suicide assassin. Five Virginia Tech professors were killed that day while protecting students. It takes a tremendous act of courage to come to the aid of someone else, unprotected, uncertain of what one might find lurking around the corner. Because of the involvement of all these people, many of us are here today and

we wouldn't have been. I'm not absolutely sure that I'd be here speaking about the incident. In Derek's classroom, eight students survived. I survived because of quick reactions, not only of myself, but because of my classmates and the professors on our floor. In our classroom specifically, there are four of us who were able to get up and that were conscious and able to do something to sort of help prolong our lives. So teamwork definitely played a huge role in not only my survival, but maybe in the survival of other students as well. The Virginia Tech school shootings were the deadliest in U.S. history.

I'm definitely more appreciative of life. Every day that I go on is another day that I have gone on and I've survived. When you go through something like this, it's definitely something that gives you a new perspective on what is a big deal and what isn't. I definitely appreciate every day, every moment, every single small thing that you experience in life. Hi, I'm Stacey Schroeder. On my podcast, I share candid updates from my personal life,

chat with some of my best friends about what's going on in our lives, give commentary on the latest pop culture headlines, and sometimes deep dive into random topics I'm obsessed with, like human design. It's a bit all over the place, but that's how I like it. And you will too. Listen to my podcast, Stassi,

wherever you get your podcasts. get your podcasts. It's August 2007 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Kim is driving a youth group bus carrying 53 children and eight adults. It is crossing the 35 West Bridge during rush hour traffic.

A semi truck was passing them on the left. As we were coming across the bridge and stuff, the kids were, you know, doing the honking gesture for the semi truck and he was honking at them and he was waving to us and stuff and that and it was, the kids love that. They do it all the time. Ariana is Kim's daughter.

There's a truck next to us and the bus was a little further ahead and he sped up and then he looked over to see what we were doing and we were all like, and everybody was yelling, honk, honk. My mom got to see him cause he was right window to window and she went like this to him and he is just like. He was pretty much right next to me

as we were approaching over the lock and dam. And then the next thing you know, the bridge started swaying. It was almost like it was a suspension bridge. And it started swaying back and forth, back and forth. And all of a sudden it was just loud rumbling like, you know, something was falling. The massive center section of the bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River. Seconds later, the outer section that the bus was on started to fall.

The first reaction is, you know, wherever, whatever's happening, I need to hang on, and I need to keep this bus straight, and I need to have my foot on the brake. I looked over to my left because I thought the semi-truck was hitting the bus. And I looked over and it wasn't hitting us. And I looked over to the right and I just was like, I don't know what was happening.

And I was getting, you know, scared. And I looked up and my mom was, we were all like bouncing and my mom was over in the seat like bouncing up and down and we couldn't see nothing and it was it was gone the truck. The bus and semi truck fell 45 feet as the edge of the bridge they were on collapsed. Jimmy is a youth group counselor. I remember hearing someone scream the bridge is the bridge is falling. It was a lot like a roller coaster. You know, you feel weightless, and I remember reaching for the seat in front of me,

like, you know, I was gonna brace myself or catch myself, but it was just like a free fall. The kids weren't, they didn't know what was going on. They didn't, it was kinda like nobody knew what was going on. Things just kinda started falling apart around us. You're hitting things and things are hitting you, and it was really, it was just a weird noise. I kind of got scared because I didn't know what was happening I thought I thought we

were going in the water we were gonna die. You didn't even know how to react it was just it happened so quick and so fast. My main concern was wherever we were gonna land we weren't gonna tip over hopefully and we were gonna land straight and I was gonna have my foot on the brake so we didn't roll anywhere or on top of anything. The bus fell 45 feet when the outer section of the bridge collapsed into the riverbank. We bounced and then we came back up and then we bounced again and we landed. And I held my foot on the brake and the steering wheel and I looked over and I looked around and I'm just in shock not knowing what's going on.

The dust came across and the kids just started screaming. Once we finally came to a rest, they were screaming for a couple seconds and then it was just silence. Jimmy had a severe concussion. I remember tasting blood in my mouth and I remember kind of feeling like a gravelly, like I had sand in my mouth type of feeling, and I remember spitting and pieces of my teeth coming out. I just went black, and I kind of had a blackout though, because then I fell down in my seat and I tried to get back up, but I couldn't breathe, and I was still laying down, and

I'm just like, mom, mom, and she couldn't hear me. I knew she couldn't. And I couldn't move. My seatbelt had me locked back into my seat tight. Kim had several crushed vertebrae from the impact. Julie, a youth counselor, was thrown from her seat. And I looked down and I seen Julie in the doorway. She was upside down backwards with her legs against the door. And I didn't know what was happening or what happened. She actually flipped over the seat and the seat that was in front of us, which it went

down to the staircase. I heard glass shatter. I saw her foot in the doorway and then I saw her one foot like over her head and she was all like in a ball and her arm was like hanging up. And I thought she died. I did see the blood, and then the window was broken, but she didn't move for a second, so I thought, you know, for the worst. And I said, Julie, Julie, are you OK, Julie?

I held my foot on the brake in the steering wheel, and I looked over, and I looked around, because there was a big dust cloud in the beginning when it first landed. And I looked down and I seen Julie in the doorway. She didn't move for a second, so I thought, for the worse. And I said, Julie, Julie, are you OK, Julie? And that's when she said, Kim, what happened? What happened?

And she was so faint when she said it. I literally thought she was dead. And then she started moving and I was so thankful that she wasn't dead. The bus landed precariously on an inclined section of the collapsed bridge. Counselors started to evacuate the 53 children from the back of the bus. Jeremy, one of the other youth workers got up

and opened the back door and we started getting all the kids out. I was in the very back of the bus. Jeremy, one of the other youth workers, got up and opened the back door. And we started getting all the kids out. I was in the very front of the bus, so all the kids were getting out in front of me. They all got out, you know, one by one. We were at the incline, so then I figured, we were probably, we'd probably roll backwards. I knew that if I let my foot off the brake,

the bus was gonna roll, and it was gonna roll on top of them, children that were getting off the bus. Kim held the brake despite her spinal injury. My kids were crying. They're like, Mom, are you OK? What happened? What happened? Mom, are you OK?

They weren't going to leave. They wanted to stay with me. And they kept telling me, Mom, we want to stay with you. We want to stay with you. She told us we have to get off the bus. And I said, no, I can't. So I had to turn around and told them. I said, you need to get your bus off this bus now and that's when you know I

wanted to lose it. I wanted to cry but I held together and that because I knew if they see me cry that it would make it worse but I knew that, you know, if I were to not make it, that the kids all made it and they were okay. And it was okay with me. If I didn't make it through it, it would have been okay. Over 100 vehicles were on the bridge when it collapsed. I saw these people around me crying and hurt. And that's kind of when I realized that this was a much bigger thing than just our school bus. It was a really, really overwhelming kind of sense of loss and

despair, I guess. I remember seeing Kim's daughter crying, and I asked her why she was crying. I started crying, and then Jimmy came up, and I'm just like, Jimmy, my mom's on the bus. Someone has to go get her. In an accident, usually your seat belt has locks so that you don't get thrown forward or whatnot. It keeps you in your spot.

It locks so tight that it was like against me so tight that I couldn't move forward or move my body at all. And I kept trying to release it and it wouldn't release. As Jimmy boarded the bus, the semi-truck alongside it caught fire. I remember seeing smoke. There was a lot of smoke. I don't know if it was in flames. You know what they say, whether there's smoke, there's fire.

And I kept telling her, Kim, you got to get off the bus. You got to get off. And she kept telling me that she couldn't, that she was in a lot of pain and she didn't think she could move. And I couldn't move. My seat belt had me locked back into my seat tight. And I looked at her and I was like, Kim, you

got to get off the bus now. Because I didn't know if it was going to fall over. And there was a semi-nexus. I was on fire. And I didn't know if it was gonna fall over and if there was a semi next to us, I was on fire and I didn't know if that was gonna blow up. I was pounding on it and it wouldn't release and then all of a sudden the bus shifted a little more and then I got scared, I got really, really scared. I remember seeing smoke and I looked at it

and I was like, Kim, you gotta get off the bus now. There was a semi next to us, I was on fire and I didn't know if that was gonna blow up or what that was gonna do. The collapsed bridge was unstable. And I couldn't move. My seatbelt had me locked back into my seat tight. She kept telling me that she couldn't because her back hurt and her legs were hurt. And then the bus shifted.

When the bus shifted, it kind of gave a little slack. And then I hit my seatbelt again, and it released. So then I was able to get up, and I used Jimmy's back like this. I had my arms like this on his back, and I leaned on him. And I grabbed on and just kind of gave her support. I didn't carry her so much as it was. Give her the support she needed to be able to stand on her own and help her down the aisle.

I walked probably about 500 feet and I fell. I couldn't walk anymore. I hurt so bad. He came out with my mom and I was happy that he did that. And I'm really thankful that he went on the bus and he got my mom off because I wouldn't have a mom. You could hear the helicopters and the ambulances and the fire trucks.

You could hear all the sirens going off and that, and people just kind of frantically running everywhere. Well, then the next thing you know, I look up and the semi truck is engulfed in smoke and flames. And I said, the guy's in the truck still. The guy is in the semi truck still. You've got to get him out. I completely bawled then too, because I knew he was in the truck still. The guy is in the semi truck still. You gotta get him out. I completely bawled then too,

because I knew he was in the truck and he was not gonna make it out. I'm just like, no, he couldn't have died. And he was the one who waved hi to us and honked at us and had a blast. We had a blast and he's now gone. The semi-truck driver died on impact. None of the children on the bus suffered any serious injuries.

It's kind of weird because for weeks and months afterwards and still now people come up to me and say, you're so lucky, you're so lucky. And at first I really struggled with that. I was like, you know, I'm not lucky. I was in this horrible, horrible accident. The chances of being on that bridge and on that bus are so slim to none that I'm not lucky. I'm unlucky. 13 people died and over 100 were injured in the bridge collapse.

There's so many, so many things that could have gone wrong that didn't. We fell in the best place we could have fallen as far as I'm concerned. If we had been 10 feet forward, we would have ended up like that semi. I survived because of chance. I survived because Kim was able to keep the bus where she kept it. Kim is still recovering from her back injuries. She credits the bus with preventing more serious injuries

to the children. The bus, through this accident, held up extremely well. The damage on the bus was mainly in the front. All the seats stayed intact. All the kids weren't hurt. They're extremely safe and I would never have a doubt in my mind putting my kids on the school bus ever. So now I have everybody in my family still here now

and me and my little brother are here, and so is my mom, so I'm pretty happy that all of us survived.