Roney said they hustled to the rear of the school bus, where the emergency door was open, and started pulling the crying children to safety. One by one, they were handed down from the bus to Roney and the other Metrobus passengers, who took the children by the hand and walked them to the curb before returning to get others.
"One was bleeding real bad, a little girl. I gave my jacket to her to try to stop the bleeding," Roney said. "She had cuts on her face, cuts on her nose, forehead. She was upset, crying. A lot of other kids were crying, hysterical."
Thomas Kelley, 50, was sitting in traffic on Courthouse Road, about two car lengths from the Columbia Pike intersection, when traffic slowed to a halt.
"What drew my attention were the people walking quickly toward the intersection and they had that look on their faces like right after 9/11," Kelley said. "You could see people with their hands over their mouths. They were shocked."
By the time the children got to the hospital, many had calmed down.
"Most of the children didn't talk a lot about the accident," said Yorke Allen, chief of emergency medicine at Virginia Hospital Center. "They spent their time talking to social workers. All were well-behaved, healthy children, acting very appropriately. Certainly the parents were relieved to see their children were going to be very well."
Added Capt. Tom Polera of the Arlington County Fire Department: "Most of them wanted cookies and to chat with their friends."
They didn't know about Lilibeth, he said.
Staff writers Michelle Boorstein, Petula Dvorak, Tom Jackman and Mary Beth Sheridan, staff researcher Bobbye Pratt and Milagros Melendez-Vela of El Tiempo Latino contributed to this report.
