Siena student credited with saving bus driver’s life

Siena student credited with saving bus driver’s life
A Siena College student has been credited with saving the life of a shuttle bus driver who suffered a medical episode while behind the wheel.

Mike Koch has been driving buses for Yankee Trails for 43 years. In his decades of shuttling people around and training new drivers, he never thought he’d have to take the wheel from someone.

This was, until Saturday, on the way from the Siena campus to the College Suites in Troy, when the woman he was training suffered a cardiac episode behind the wheel near the intersection of Routes 9 and 378. She stopped breathing.

“I stood up, and basically steered the bus,” Koch recalled. He made a complete stop and called 911.

A few rows back, Prince Asante, a Siena College senior who had felt the bus swerving, and heard the commotion, ran to the front.

A woman in a car behind the bus stopped and got out to help as well.

Asante couldn’t feel a pulse on the trainee driver’s neck or wrist. He and the woman got the incapacitated driver out of the bus.

Asante, a biology major graduating this coming Sunday, began performing CPR, a technique he learned about in his classes.

“I have never done it on a real person before until that day,” he said.

However, you wouldn’t know it was new to him. He is credited with saving the driver’s life while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.

“I never believed that I would be able to save someone’s life, that I would be the reason why someone would smile,” said Asante, “and I was able to achieve that. I think this will be the proudest moment of my life.“

Koch and Asante are both hoping for the best outcome for the trainee driver.

“Last I talked to her daughter, she’s recovered, intubated, not able to speak, but she’s awake and aware,” Koch told NEWS10.

They both also hope the “Good Samaritan” who stopped her car to help comes forward so she can get credit for her work, as well.

With graduation a few days away, Asante is looking to his future. He came to Siena College from Ghana, and hopes to someday attend medical school.

He has one life saved already under his belt.