Jennilene Courtney, the co-owner of Little Andy’s Day Care Center in Canarsie, heard a loud boom at 8:20 a.m. Monday morning. It must have been an accident, she thought. She wasn’t expecting what she saw when she looked out her front window. She screamed when she saw the school bus crashed in her front lawn.
“I saw a whole bunch of smoke” Courtney says. The yellow school bus was on fire right outside her front door. People had begun to gather. Courtney, who runs the day care out of her home, moved kids to a neighbor’s house with the help of a few bystanders. She wouldn’t let the kids see the fire.
When she returned, Courtney found the driver injured and unconscious. He was later taken to Brookdale Hospital. His condition remains unknown. There were no children aboard the bus, and only the driver was injured.
“There was a lot of blaze and fire,” says Courtney.
Courtney thought the fire would destroy her house, but it damaged only her front yard. The fire department, she says, came within five minutes of the accident and extinguished the fire.
Three hours later, she says, the bus was taken away by the owner, The Atlantic Express. The children Courtney takes care of stayed at Litte Andy’s Day Center for the rest of the day.
Ravi Kumar reports from the scene.
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