know, one minute i m driving down the road and the next minute i see a little girl swing open the door on this church bus and fall to the highway. it was heartbreaking, but instantly, you know, i used my ems training and firefighter training and assessed the scene as best as i could. i realized it wasn t a good place for her to land there, you know, typically, you know, ems we re not suppose to move the patient unless they re in a pretty dangerous situation. and because she was on state highway there in arkansas, it was grounds to get her out of there. i couldn t stand for her to get hit by a car or someone hit us both. thank goodness for people who see something and do something about it. the little girl suffered a broken jaw, she s expected to be okay. no one was aware. thank you so much for watching cnn newsroom.
incredible story captured. how is that little girl? reporter: i had an opportunity to speak to that man in the blue shirt, ryan, who tells me that before he s a firefighter he is a father. so the moment that he pulled into that scene there, what was a very heartbreaking scene, that paternal instinct immediately kicked in, rushing to that 4-year-old little girl as you see carefully picking her up off that asphalt and eventually taking her onto the bed of a pickup truck to wait for more help to arrive. also speaking to our colleague, fredricka whitfield, in the last few hours. i want you to hear directly from him. it was just unbelievable. you know, one minute i m just driving down the road and the next minute i see a little girl swing open the door on this church bus and fall to the highway. it was heartbreaking, but instantly, you know, i used my ems training and firefighter
you see there the child falling out of that vehicle and you see this firefighter coming to the child s rescue. she s limp there as he picks her up. you can see the other person just aghast as it happened. that firefighter is joining me now for this cnn exclusive interview. ryan, amazing moment. how you had the wherewithal to just jump into action. i realize you are a firefighter, saving lives is what you do. again explain for me what you saw as it was happening and what your instincts told you. it was just unbelievable. one minute i m just driving down the road, and the next minute i see a little girl swing over the door on this church bus and fall to the highway. it was heartbreaking. but instantly i used my ems training and firefighter training and assessed the scene
motionless. in an interview i had with him that you re about to see, he describes how he was able to remain calm, yet at the same time just really follow his instincts. it was just unbelievable. one minute i m just driving down the road, and the next minute i see a little girl swing over the door on this church bus and fall to the highway. it was heartbreaking. but instantly i used my ems training and firefighter training and assessed the scene as best as i could. i realized that it wasn t a good place for her laying there. typically in ems we re not supposed to move the parent move the patient unless they are in a pretty dangerous situation. and because she was state highway there in harrison, arkansas, it was grounds to get her out of there. i couldn t stand for her to get hit by a car or someone hit us both and so i immediately got out of my car. i realized the pavement was
point where there was a brief moment of silence and i looked up to see if he was anywhere around which i did not find. once i saw that there was a clearing, we booked out of there. and there were other people around us as well. we were trying to get everybody out to safety. at that point and there were kids in the movie? yes, there was. i heard there was a 6-year-old kid that got shot. there was a baby in there. there was 14-year-old kids, 13-year-old kids. when we were leaving i saw so many bodies just laying in the stairs, laying on the chairs. they were limp and laying lifeless. they looked dead to me. either that or they were injured. as they were going out, he left before me. he ran before me and i was crawling to try to get out. i nudged into this gentleman and he had a gunshot in his back and at that point i had some former ems training, an emt, and it kicked in instinctively and i took his pulse to see if he was alive or if he was okay. he wasn t doing so hot. i was lik