When one of the children on the bus lowered a window and began waving out of it, Ellis realized something was wrong.
Unable to get into the bus through its front door, he told the kids to open the emergency exit in the back of the bus. They did, and he climbed aboard and made his way to the front of the bus to find Kass slumped over in his seat and seizing.
“At that point, the kids were pretty hysterical,” Ellis said. “Basically, the only thing holding Ronnie up from a foot off the ground was a seat belt. He was blue. He wasn’t breathing.”
Opening the front door of the bus from the inside, Ellis told the students – who had already called 911 – to disembark and wait on the lawn of one of his neighbors.
Before administering CPR, Ellis performed a “jaw thrust” maneuver on Kass, intended to clear the airway of the tongue. “It’s something we do in anesthesia,” he said.
To Ellis’ relief, it worked. Although Kass remained unresponsive, he began breathing.
After using the bus’ two-way radio to notify dispatch to send another bus to pick up the children, Ellis and his neighbor took Kass off the bus to await an ambulance, which arrived soon thereafter.
They brought him to St. Tammany Health System’s main hospital campus in Covington. By sheer happenstance, Ellis just so happened to be working a shift later that day, giving the two a chance to visit – and giving the then-conscious Kass a chance to meet the man who saved his life.
“Nothing like that has ever happened to me, and chances are it will never happen again,” Ellis said. “But I was very happy and very fortunate to have the knowledge and the skill set I do have. I hope it never happens again, but if it does, I’m ready. Hopefully, it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal.”