Toddler tumbles out of moving church bus

A 4-year-old girl tumbled out the back door of a moving church bus in Arkansas, startling dashcam footage shows.

The video — captured Friday by a volunteer firefighter who rescued the tot from the roadway — shows the bus heading down a road in Harrison before the door somehow swings open and the girl falls out. The bus driver, apparently unaware, continues along the highway as if nothing had happened.

Other children on the bus told police that the girl pulled the latch on the exit door by herself, opened it and suddenly fell out, CNN reported.

The Crawford County volunteer firefighter, Ryan Ciampoli, immediately stopped his truck, got out and approached the girl, who initially was unconscious but then began to wake up.

“Once I picked her up and put her in my arms, it was heartbreaking,” he said on the “Today” show. “She just had this horrified look on her face. I just had to not think about my family, my children, and just focus on her.”

Ciampoli, a licensed EMT, said he normally wouldn’t move someone with trauma injuries — but he didn’t want to risk leaving her in the middle of the road, where a car might hit her. He placed her on a truck bed in a nearby parking lot, where he worked on keeping her conscious and continually checked her vitals, 4029 TV reported.

“Once the adrenaline and the shock kicked in in her little body, she started kicking and screaming, ‘Where’s my mommy?’ and things like that,” Ciampoli told the station.

The bus driver returned about 15 minutes later, and the unnamed girl was rushed to the hospital for a broken jaw. She has since been released.

“Nothing hurts worse or makes you stay up at night longer than dealing with a child, especially holding her in your arms and, you know, you’re never going to forget that image out of your head,” Ciampoli added.

“I think I was just in the right place at the right time,” he added. “And I was blessed that she was OK.”

The male driver was the only adult on the bus — which was taking the children either to or from church — and the other young passengers told him what happened, prompting him to turn around, Paul Woodruff, chief of the Harrison Police Department, told CNN.

He will not face charges, “as this was just a tragic accident,” Woodruff said.