'I had to step in': Hero bus driver coaxes woman off ledge of bridge

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A bus driver in Buffalo, N.Y., is being celebrated as a hero after he stopped on an overpass and coaxed a woman who appeared to be on the brink of suicide to safety.

“Knowing that I saved somebody’s life, it makes me feel good, being at the right place at the right time,’’ driver Darnell Barton told TODAY Thursday.

Barton, 37, was driving a bus full of McKinley High School students home on Oct. 18 when he spotted a young woman standing outside of a railing on a narrow ledge of an overpass on the Scajaquada Expressway.

“When I saw her on the other side of the guard rail, I immediately (thought)…this is something, this isn’t right,’’ Barton said.

Surveillance video shows Barton stopping the bus, opening the door and calling out to the woman, who is believed to be in her 20s. The woman has her back turned to the bus and is clinging to the railing while looking over the edge of the overpass. Barton called the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority’s Metro Bus dispatcher to inform them of the situation while continuing to speak to the woman.

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