A local volunteer firefighter and licensed EMT is being hailed a hero after coming to the rescue of a four-year-old girl who fell out of the back of a moving bus.
Ryan Ciampoli captured the shocking moment on his vehicle’s dashcam as he drove behind the bus on Highway 65 in Harrison, Ark. on Wednesday. The incredible video shows the backdoor of the bus suddenly swing open with a little girl holding onto it briefly before she lets go and tumbles to the road.
"It was just unbelievable. One minute I'm just driving down the road, and the next minute I see a little girl swing over the door on this church bus and fall to the highway,” Ciampoli told CNN on Sunday. “It was heartbreaking.”
The bus doesn’t stop after the incident and continues to drive away as the girl is seen lying on the pavement. Ciampoli immediately leapt into action and ran over to help the young girl.
“Obviously you want to leave her there if she’s not in danger, but obviously we’re in the middle of a state highway so I couldn’t leave her just laying there,” he explained.
The Crawford County firefighter said the child was initially unconscious but that she woke up as he approached her.
“She started to move her arm and kind of look up at me and so I picked her up as carefully as I could and held her in my arms and kind of assessed her little body to see what kind of damages had been done from the fall,” Ciampoli said.
The EMT said he carried the girl to the side of the road and laid her on a truck bed in a parking lot while he checked her vitals and tried to keep her conscious until the paramedics arrived.
“It’s hard to use a clear head, but I tried my best,” Ciampoli said. “I have an 8-year-old son. I've got kids, little girls, and it's hard. So just picking her up and getting her out of that situation, out of the middle of the road was priority one."
Paramedics arrived on the scene five minutes later and the four-year-old was rushed to a nearby hospital. The girl’s mother told 40/29 News that her daughter had a broken jaw and would need surgery for it. She is expected to be released from the hospital on Monday.
The girl’s mother said she isn’t blaming the bus driver for what happened and that she’s focusing on her daughter’s recovery instead. It’s still unclear how the young girl managed to fall out of the back of the bus.
Ciampoli said he’s just thankful he was there at the right place and the right time to help the little girl. He also encouraged everyone to take a first responder’s training class to prepare for emergencies such as this one.
"It can happen anywhere anytime,” he said. “Never would you think driving down the road, that something like that would happen."
