A 4-year-old girl fell out of the back door of a moving church bus in Arkansas, according to shocking dashcam footage captured by a volunteer firefighter.
The video shows the bus moving down the road when the door swings open and the girl somehow falls out. The bus driver, seemingly unaware of what just happened, continues down the road.
It is unclear whether the girl opened the door or if it was already unlocked.
Ryan Ciampoli, the volunteer firefighter who captured the footage on his dashcam, immediately stopped his truck, got out, and walked over to the girl. The girl was initially unconscious, but then began to wake up.
“Once I picked her up and put her in my arms, it was heartbreaking,” he told the Today show. “She just had this horrified look on her face. I just had to not think about my family, my children, and just focus on her.”
Ciampoli, who is a trained emergency medical technician, said he normally would not move someone with trauma injuries, but he did not want to risk her getting hit by a car in the middle of a busy road.
He made the decision to move her to a truck bed in a nearby parking lot, where he tried to keep her conscious and checked her vitals, KHBS reported.
“Once the adrenaline and the shock kicked in in her little body, she started kicking and screaming, ‘Where’s my mommy?’ and things like that,” Ciampoli told the station.
The bus driver returned to the scene 15 minutes later, after the girl was taken to the hospital to be treated for a broken jaw. She will undergo surgery and is expected to make a full recovery.
“Nothing hurts worse or makes you stay up at night longer than dealing with a child, especially holding her in your arms and, you know, you’re never going to forget that image out of your head,” Ciampoli added.
The male driver, who was the only adult on the bus, was taking the passengers either to or from church when the other children told him what happened. He then turned around, Paul Woodruff, chief of the Harrison Police Department, told CNN.
Woodruff said he will not face charges, calling it a “tragic accident.”