Bus Driver Stops, Pulls Woman Off Ledge

A Buffalo bus driver is getting the hero's treatment after stopping his bus to get a suicidal young woman off a bridge overpass, reports WIVB-TV. Darnell Barton, who had just picked up about two dozen high school students, spotted the woman on the wrong side of the ledge, seemingly about to jump into traffic, reports the Buffalo News. He stopped his bus, asked her if she needed help, then slowly made his way toward her.

"She was distraught, she was distant, she was really disconnected," he recalls. "I grabbed her arm and put my arm around her and said, 'Do you want to come on this side of the guardrail,' and that was actually the first time she spoke to me. She said yes." He then sat down with her on the sidewalk until authorities arrived. “Darnell won’t tell you this, but when he went back on his bus, the McKinley students gave him a round of applause,” says a spokesman for the local transit agency. (More Buffalo stories.)