CLEVELAND — Rolling downhill in a bus with his screaming classmates and no driver, an 11- year-old jumped behind the wheel Monday and steered the bus into a pillar, stopping it from speeding out of control.
Some children jumped out the side door and rolled into the street. The driver, Michael Weir, had stopped for fuel and was in the rest room when the bus left with 27 children.
Fifteen children were treated at hospitals for minor injuries and released.
The boy who stopped the bus “did some quick thinking,” said Larry Gray, a fire department spokesman.
Weir, whose bus was carrying kindergartners through seventh-graders, bought $40 worth of diesel at a station across the street from Progressive Field, home of the Cleveland Indians. State law prohibits bus drivers from leaving vehicles when students are on board, and they can’t stop for gas during their route, said a Ohio Department of Education spokesman.
Authorities were trying to find out more about why Weir left the bus.
