Quick-thinking middle school students in Mississippi kept their school bus from crashing after their driver passed out while on a four-lane highway.
The bus had just left Hancock Middle School in Hancock County on Wednesday with about 40 children on board when Leah Taylor, 46, had an asthma attack. She reached for her medication but blacked out before she could get it.
In a matter of seconds, the students sprang into action.
Sixth grader Jackson Casnave, 12, who was sitting directly behind the driver, noticed the bus beginning to swerve. Casnave jumped up to steer and told others to call for help.
“I didn’t have time to process my emotions,” Casnave said. “I just wanted to make sure that nobody got hurt.”
Another sixth grader, 12-year-old Darrius Clark, hit the brakes, and together the two managed to maneuver the bus onto a median and put it in park.
Clark's 13-year-old sister Kayleigh ran from the back of the bus to the front and called 911. She said later that she could hardly hear the emergency operator because so many students were screaming.
“I was scared, but also I had to help,” said Kayleigh Clark, an eighth grader.
Fellow eighth grader Destiny Cornelius, 15, also ran up to help and noticed that Taylor was holding a nebulizer. Cornelius administered the medicine while McKenzy Finch, a 13-year-old sixth grader, held Taylor's head.
Finch also picked up Taylor's phone, which was ringing, and told the district's transportation team what had happened.
“I’m grateful for my students,” said Taylor, who has made a full recovery. “They’re the ones that saved my life and everybody else’s on that bus.”
The students were honored at a pep rally Friday and will be treated to a lunch field trip next week at a restaurant of their choosing.
“What they did took courage,” principal Dr. Melissa Saucier said. “They didn’t wait for somebody to step in, they stepped up themselves, and that says a lot about their character.”
A Hancock County School District bus in Hancock County, Miss., on Thursday, April 23, 2026. (WLOX via AP)
Five middle school students, who helped stop a bus after their driver passed out during a medical emergency, stand outside a bus in Hancock County, Miss., on Thursday, April 23, 2026. (WLOX via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted again Tuesday, this time in an investigation over a social media photo of seashells arranged on a beach that officials said constituted a threat against President Donald Trump.
The criminal case is the second in a matter of months against Comey and is part of the Trump administration Justice Department's relentless effort to prosecute political opponents of the Republican president. The seashells photo was posted nearly a year ago, but the indictment was secured at a time when acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, a Trump loyalist who previously served as his personal lawyer, aims to prove to the president that he is the right person to hold the job permanently.
The fact that the Justice Department pursued a new case against the ex-FBI director months after a separate and unrelated indictment was dismissed could expose the government to claims of a vindictive prosecution and to arguments that it is going out of its way to target Comey, who had overseen the early months of an investigation into whether Trump's 2016 campaign had coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of that year’s election. Comey was fired by Trump months into the president’s first term as that investigation was underway, and they have openly feuded ever since.
The two-count indictment charges Comey with “knowingly and willfully” making a threat to “take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon" Trump and with transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. It does not provide evidence to support the claim Comey knowingly threatened Trump, especially since he Comey said the opposite, but suggested a “reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret” the message as a threat to do harm.
At a news conference announcing the indictment, Blanche refused to elaborate on any evidence of intent the government has but said: “How do you prove intent in any case? You prove intent with witnesses, with documents, with the defendant himself to the extent it's appropriate. And that's how we'll prove intent in this case.”
And in an effort to rebut claims that Comey was being selectively prosecuted, Blanche contended that the case against the former FBI director was similar in kind to other threats cases the department routinely brings against the lesser known.
“While this case is unique and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant, his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate and regularly prosecute,” Blanche said.
The case was filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina, the state where Comey found the seashells.
Comey's lawyer did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment Tuesday.
The prosecution arises from a May post on Instagram in which Comey shared a photo of seashells he saw on a walk in the arrangement of “86 47.” He has said he assumed that the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence. Comey deleted the post shortly after it was made, writing: “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence” and “I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”
Nonetheless, Comey was swiftly interviewed by the Secret Service after Trump administration officials asserted that he was advocating the assassination of Trump, the 47th president.
Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by The Associated Press, says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” It notes: “Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ‘to kill.’ We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”
Trump, in a Fox News Channel interview in May, accused Comey of knowing “exactly what that meant."
“A child knows what that meant,” Trump said. "If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.”
The former FBI director was indicted in September on charges that he lied to and obstructed Congress related to testimony he gave in 2020 about whether he had authorized inside information about an investigation to be provided to a journalist. He denied any wrongdoing, and the case was subsequently dismissed after a judge concluded that the prosecutor who brought the indictment was illegally appointed.
Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and serving before that as a senior Justice Department official in President George W. Bush’s Republican administration.
But the relationship was strained from the start, including after Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private dinner to pledge his personal loyalty to the president -- an overture that so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017 amid an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign. That inquiry, later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, would ultimately find that while Russia interfered in the 2016 election and the Trump team welcomed the help, there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal collaboration.
Blanche was elevated earlier this month from deputy attorney general to acting attorney general, replacing Pam Bondi, who had frustrated Trump with the department's struggles to build successful criminal cases against his adversaries. Blanche since then has moved quickly to announce politically charged prosecutions, including a case last week against the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center, which is accused by the Justice Department of defrauding donors by paying donors to infiltrate hate groups. The group has denied any wrongdoing.
Comey is among many Trump foes to face scrutiny over the last year.
The Justice Department, for instance, is also pursuing a criminal investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, another key figure in the Russia investigation -- one of Trump’s chief grievances and a saga that he and his supporters have long sought retaliation for. Brennan has denied doing anything wrong.
CNN was the first to report the second indictment against Comey.
Follow the AP's coverage of former FBI Director James Comey at https://apnews.com/hub/james-comey.
FBI Director Kash Patel, left, and Ellis Boyle, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of N.C., right, look on as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announces that former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted, at the Justice Department in Washington, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
FBI Director Kash Patel, left, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, center, and Ellis Boyle, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of of N.C., announce that former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted, at the Justice Department in Washington, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
FILE - Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey at Harvard University's Institute of Politics' JFK Jr. Forum in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
FILE - Former FBI Director James Comey speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 17, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
