1:35A western Minnesota sheriff's deputy and a motorist teamed up on the fly to slow down a runaway school bus and bring it to a safe halt as vehicles heading the other way dodged disaster, authorities said.
The rolling drama unfolded over the noon hour Wednesday after the bus driver suffered a medical incident in Granite Falls on Hwy. 212, where the bus with no students aboard had hit two stationary vehicles near a traffic light in town, according to the Yellow Medicine County Sheriff's Office.
"These two did a great job," Sheriff Bill Flaten said Thursday. "They definitely saved individuals from harm or possible death" along the 6-mile stretch from when the bus first went out of control at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour until it was stopped north of County Road 5.
Flaten said the 70-year-old bus driver, Brian Fuller, "was awake the whole time, just incoherent."
The motorist, off-duty Granite City Assistant Fire Chief Greg Meyer, said the bus driver "was in the wrong lane, but he drove the road. He made the curves. I don't know how he did it. He could've taken out about 15 different vehicles."
Numerous callers to 911 said the small bus from the Renville County West School District, en route to pick up students for a summer education program, first rear-ended a pickup truck at a stoplight and "pushes it for 2½ blocks with the pickup driver still inside," Flaten said. The bus then struck a van, he said.
"Definitely some kind of seizure, stroke," a sheriff's deputy reported from the highway, according to emergency dispatch audio.
Yellow Medicine deputies, their squad sirens blaring and lights flashing as warnings to unsuspecting motorists, caught up with the moving bus minutes later west of Granite Falls on Hwy. 212.
