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School Bus Driver Suffers Heart Attack In Prospect Heights

School Bus Driver Suffers Heart Attack

PROSPECT HEIGHTS, Ill. (CBS) -- A 67-year-old bus driver collapsed and suffered an apparent heart attack on Monday as kids were boarding his bus to go home.

WBBM Newsradio's Nancy Harty reports, at the end of the day on Monday, students from Betsy Ross and Anne Sullivan elementary schools in Prospect Heights were filing out of school and climbing on their buses.

Prospect Heights School District 23 Supt. Deb Wilson said that's when an aide on one of the buses noticed the driver, Chuck Fedarj, wasn't in his seat.

"They're little kids. They described it as he reached for something, and he had fallen, so I think in their minds, they're not processing this as a heart attack," she said.

Wilson described the ensuing scene as extremely orderly, with older kids helping younger ones exit from the back of the bus, while a school nurse used a defibrillator and performed CPR on the driver.

"For a horrible situation, people just performed admirably," she said.

Wilson said Fedaj was in the intensive care unit on Wednesday, but alert.

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