Student describes helping classmates after car crashes head-on with school bus



BURIEN, Wash. – Three people in a stolen car were rushed to Harborview Medical Center on Friday morning after the vehicle crashed head-on into a school bus, police said.

The crash happened near South 112th Street and Glendale Way South in Burien.

More than a dozen kids were on the bus at the time of the crash and several of them were sent to hospitals to be checked out.

Q13 News spoke with one of the kids on that bus who said he immediately sprang into action to help his friends.

“I just went flying into the seat,” said the Raisbeck Aviation High School student.

He says the crash happened so fast he wasn’t sure if his classmates were OK.

“I took a leading role into it and kind of tried to get everybody off the bus as soon as possible,” he said.

The crash happened around 8:30 Friday morning. The three people who police say were in  inside the stolen white Prius were rushed to Harborview with life-threatening conditions. They were in their teens and 20s, police say.

“Had there been much more speed, then it could have affected the bus as well, especially the bus driver,” said interim Burien Police Chief Marcus Williams.

“A few said they had pain in their neck like back pain, a friend of mine who was sitting literally right next to me – he went face-first into the seat just like I did,” recalled the student. “He had a little gash on his head, a little cut on his nose.”

The school district says they took four students to local hospitals out of an abundance of caution to get them a medical evaluation. Meanwhile the other kids were being sheltered at the elementary school next to this crash scene.

Seventeen people, including the driver, were on the bus headed to Tukwila. School district officials say there may have been cameras on board that caught the crash on tape.

The identities of the people in the Prius have yet to be released by police.

Some kids who were on the bus say they were going to take an early Friday after surviving the ordeal.

“I can’t focus right now,” one student told Q13 News. “I’m just going to go home and relax.”

A message left with the Federal Way Police Department asking for more information regarding the circumstances surrounding the theft of the Prius was not immediately returned.