SUFFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — One moment he was talking to his friend, and the next, he felt the bus move.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and then the bus rolled over,” a little boy told 10 On Your Side, two days after his school bus crashed on its way to Southwestern Elementary School in Suffolk.
“I was scared because I didn’t know what happened,” he said. “I was seeing if everybody was safe.”
He is one of 12 students aboard the bus that crashed and overturned on Cypress Chapel Road near Carolina Road just before 9:30 Monday morning.
The school told 10 On Your Side all the injuries were minor. The young boy we spoke with had surgery for his wound, and will spend several days at home as he recovers.
He doesn’t remember much from the crash, except that he hit both the floor and the ceiling of the bus. He ended up with a large gash in his back. Doctors told his parents he was cut down to the bone, and that they cleaned gravel and asphalt out of his wound.
But he doesn’t remember feeling any pain — at first.
“When I looked on my back there was a hole in my shirt and I looked, there was a big spot with blood coming out,” he said.
As they waited for first responders, the young boy and his classmates ended up in Gina Violette’s living room. She lives just steps from where the crash happened.
“There was blood everywhere,” Violette said. “A lot of kids had blood on their faces.”
“We got them in here where they could be warm and we could love on them and calm them down and tell them they would be OK,” she said.
The driver of the bus remains in the hospital.
Suffolk Police told 10 On Your Side that the investigation will take some time to determine what happened, as there are many different elements — including video — for review.