A man who boarded a school bus full of terrified children racing down a Minnesota street after its driver had a medical emergency and manually stopped it says he was motivated to act by a verse from the Koran about how saving one life is equivalent to saving all of humanity. “I’m a numbers guy, and those numbers make sense to me,” Ebro Ahmed, 27, said Friday during an interview about his actions four days earlier outside his family’s store in Saint Paul, Minnesota. “I didn’t do it for myself. It was selfless in the name of God.” In a dramatic sequence of events captured on store surveillance video, Ahmed was kicking a soccer ball and scrolling on his cell phone during a break outside his family’s Ya Bricks tobacco and snack shop Monday afternoon when he noticed a yellow school bus passing by with its door open. Ahmed said he deduced something was wrong when he saw the bus driver with foam coming out of his mouth, which can be a symptom of a seizure. He remembered instinctively running toward the bus; jumping out the door; and throwing his phone and glasses to two girls in the front to free his hands. His first thought was to see if there was some way he could park the bus. But, with frightened boys and girls screaming around him, Ahmed said he hit the bus’s emergency brake, stopping the vehicle without anyone on board or on the street being hurt. He said he then asked one of the children to call for emergency help. A statement from the Saint Paul Public School District on Friday confirmed that there had been a medical emergency on the bus outside Ahmed’s family store that day that required paramedics to respond. Another bus came to pick up the 19 students on board and take them home, the district said. Meanwhile, the driver was resting at home after being taken to a hospital and released. The National Safety Council estimates that about 20.3 million children ride school buses in the U.S. daily, a number large enough that driver-related emergencies occasionally occur. of Ahmed running towards the runaway bus. That footage went viral along with an interview the station did with Ahmed, in which he credited the television medical drama Grey’s Anatomy for teaching him “what to do in situations you could never see yourself in.” Ahmed elaborated with The Guardian on Friday, saying that the verse from the Quran that declares that “whoever saves one life, it will be as if he saved all of humanity” also entered his mind at the time he decided to intervene on Monday. Additionally, he mentioned how difficult it had been for his parents, who are immigrants from the East African country of Eritrea, to run a store in Saint Paul during the mass deportation campaign carried out by Donald Trump during his second presidency. Ahmed, who said he was born in the United States, added that business at the store had slowed since federal immigration agents leading that effort arrived in Saint Paul and nearby Minneapolis as part of what the Trump administration called Operation Metro. opportunity to, as he called it, portray Eritreans and represent Eritreans and East Africans “in a good way.” He alluded to a local marketing and media company that donated $1,000 to him as a token of appreciation for his heroics on the bus, a performance involving a Superman artist, and a novelty check. Ahmed said he had been invited to speak on at least one panel, and that a city council member had contacted him to congratulate him. An uncle in Europe did too after hearing about what Ahmed had done on the news. Perhaps most meaningful to Ahmed, he said, was seeing his story catch on in Eritrean circles. “I’m proud to be able to represent them in a good way,” Ahmed said.
