A St. Paul Man Leaps Aboard a Rolling School Bus and Brings It to a Stop
Ebro Ahmed, 27, was outside his family's corner store in St. Paul's Dayton's Bluff neighborhood when a middle school bus rolled past with its door open and its driver in medical distress. He jumped aboard and stopped it. All 19 students were unhurt, the school district said.
Just News Desk, Correspondent||5 min read
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Ebro Ahmed was taking a break outside his family's corner store on the east side of St. Paul last Monday afternoon when a yellow school bus rolled past him with its door wide open and its lights flashing. Inside, the driver was in the grip of a medical emergency, and 19 middle school students were aboard. Within seconds, Mr. Ahmed, 27, had sprinted after the bus, jumped on and brought it to a stop. No one was hurt, according to St. Paul Public Schools.
The bus was carrying students home from Battle Creek Middle School on Oct. 19 when it drifted down the street outside Ya Bricks Snacks and Tobacco, near North Mendota Street and Fremont Avenue East in the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood, according to WCCO, the CBS station in the Twin Cities. Mr. Ahmed told CBS News that the bus was moving at about 10 miles per hour, and that the flashing lights had caught his eye because a school bus normally flashes them only when it is fully stopped.
"When he drove past me, it really shook me," he told CBS News. "I was like, 'What is going on?'"
The driver's station of a school bus, December 25, 2024. Illustrative image, not the St. Paul bus. Photo: Oleg Yunakov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:School_bus_driver_seat.jpg
Surveillance video from the store, reviewed by several Twin Cities stations, shows him running from the sidewalk and leaping through the open door. He had never been behind the wheel of a bus, he told CBS News. Reaching for the gear selector, he tried to shift into park and instead put the bus into reverse.
"I started hearing beeps and we were going backwards," he said. "And then I said, 'That is not right,' and I threw it into neutral and pulled the [parking] brake."
He then called the police and an ambulance for the driver, he told KSTP. When he turned around, he told WCCO, he saw the children "kind of a little scared, crying, you know, with their phones out, getting ready to call the police."
Passenger seats inside a 2012 Thomas Saf-T-Liner C2 school bus in Albemarle County, Virginia, June 19, 2012. Illustrative image, not the St. Paul bus. Photo: Bill McChesney, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_C2_interior_seats.jpg
The school district said paramedics responded and took the driver to a hospital. By Wednesday evening, the district said, the driver had been released and was resting at home. A second bus picked up the students and finished the route, and the school's mental health team checked in with the children afterward, according to the district. Students were likely late getting home, a district spokesperson told WCCO, and some may have been upset.
Mr. Ahmed has no medical training. He credits an unlikely tutor for his composure: the television drama "Grey's Anatomy."
"In 'Grey's Anatomy,' you never see doctors panic," he told CBS News. "I know it is all acting and stuff, so I just knew to be calm and just think everything through."
He told The Guardian that something older was on his mind as well: a verse of the Quran holding that whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity. "I didn't do it for me," he said.
Downtown St. Paul and the Mississippi River, seen over wildflowers from the overlook in Indian Mounds Park in the Dayton's Bluff area. Illustrative image. Photo: Iulus Ascanius at English Wikipedia, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Paul_Over_Wildflowers.JPG
Video of the rescue has since spread widely online. District officials called Mr. Ahmed a hero, according to FOX 9, and the Human Development Fund honored him with a Humanitarian Hero Award. His family is from Eritrea, and he told FOX 9 that the outpouring had been "a little overwhelming" but also "rewarding," in part because it was "shedding a good light on East Africans and Muslims in general."
He said he was grateful it had not happened on a highway or a busier street, where the outcome could have been far worse. Asked whether he considered himself a hero, he demurred.
"I feel like any person in my situation would have done the same thing," he told CBS News. To KSTP, he put it more simply still: "At the end of the day, youth are the most innocent humans on Earth, so anything you can do to save them, help them, it's worth it."
Sources: CBS News, "Minnesota man who jumped onto runaway school bus credits 'Grey's Anatomy' for inspiring his actions," October 21, 2026, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minnesota-man-runaway-school-bus-saint-paul-greys-anatomy/ ; WCCO/CBS Minnesota, "Video shows quick-thinking bystander stop runaway St. Paul school bus," October 21, 2026, https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/bystander-stops-runaway-school-bus-st-paul-minnesota/ ; KSTP, "St. Paul man jumps onto moving school bus after driver's medical emergency, saving 18 kids," October 20, 2026, https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/st-paul-man-jumps-onto-moving-school-bus-after-drivers-medical-emergency-saving-18-kids/ ; FOX 9, October 23, 2026, https://www.fox9.com/news/st-paul-man-stops-runaway-school-bus-19-students-board-oct-2026 ; The Guardian, "Verse from Qur'an inspired US man to leap on runaway school bus and halt it," October 24, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/24/runaway-school-bus-quran-minnesota
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