Man jumps into action following Henrico daycare bus crash, pulls children out of vehicle

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — On Thursday, July 21, Henrico police responded to a daycare bus crash on the Richmond-Henrico Turnpike, where several people had to be rescued from the overturned vehicle.

8News spoke with a man who said he couldn’t sit idly by when he saw a bus with a dent in the roof and broken glass stuck in a ravine on the side of the road after crashing. The vehicle was full of kids. He said he had to step in.

“I got out and said, ‘Is everybody ok?’ Then I heard the kids screaming,” Al-Tamar Glover said.

Glover said he was on his way down the Richmond-Henrico Turnpike when he saw the bus. Glover and several others present at the scene sprang into action.

“So, then I took my flip-flops off, put my sneakers on and ran down there to break the window,” Glover said.

Glover had trouble breaking the windows but said another woman luckily had a tool to break the glass.

“I ended up breaking the glass, and from that point you heard the sirens and everything. I was already pulling kids out from there, one by one. From there, we had a chain going up to the street area,” Glover said.

Police say before the crash, the bus was traveling along the Richmond-Henrico Turnpike heading toward Laburnum Avenue. The bus ended up crashing on the side of the road. Police said only the bus was involved and they do not yet know why it crashed.

“They all were screaming, and me being a father, I started getting emotional so I knew I had to get them out of there,” Glover said. “And one by one I kept telling them, ‘it’s okay, it’s okay.’ And telling them to move slowly so they wouldn’t get cut. They just kept on screaming. I’m thinking about my own child.”

A total of 10 people — nine kids and one adult — were pulled from the bus with the help of bystanders and first responders.

Glover is happy he stopped to help and said he would do it again.

“Everybody deserves to live their life to the fullest,” he said. “And these kids deserve that.”

Henrico police are still investigating the cause of the bus crash. They said speed or alcohol were not factors in this incident.