Victoria Ruiz with her daughters Keria Hadley and Nebula Ogburn. Hadley was nearly hit by a truck passing a stopped school bus last week.

LIVE OAK, Fla. — Jimmy Cannon will never forget the morning of Oct. 20.

That morning, Cannon was stopped in a Suwannee County school bus on County Road 250 to pick up Keria Hadley and Nebula Ogburn from their mother’s house.

But as the girls approached the road from their mother’s car, Cannon saw a black truck approaching and not appearing ready to slow down.

“I happened to look up and … I could tell that truck wasn’t stopping,” Cannon said. “So I just laid on the horn and she covered her ears and turned away.

“I cried for two days. The mom was right there and it unfolded right in front of her eyes also. It was just a miracle that the little girl got out of the way just in time.”

Victoria Ruiz, the mother of 5-year-old Keria and 8-year-old Nebula, said she never saw the truck until it would have been too late.

“I’m very thankful for him,” she said. “If it wasn’t for him being aware of all the situations that happen. That’s what you call a good bus driver.”

Cannon said he has noticed this year — the first year the girls have been on his route — that Keria usually wastes little time in crossing the road to get on the bus, not always waiting on her sister.

“I could just tell when she closed the door on her mom’s car that she wasn’t going to wait for her sister,” he said about that fateful morning.

Ruiz, too, said Keria was faster getting out of the car that morning which left Nebula about five feet behind as they walked to the road from her car near the end of the drive.

From there, came the speeding black truck — passing a stopped school bus carries with it a minimum fine of $165, $265 if it is on the door side of the bus as well as four points on a driver’s license — and the sound of Cannon honking the horn.

“The horn was so loud that early in the morning, it scared her and she stopped dead in her tracks,” Ruiz said. “That truck was going so fast, it almost knocked her on her butt. It was something serious.

“It even had to run off the road right there to get around the stop signs that were out on the bus.”

Cannon added: “If she would have been an inch taller, I bet the mirror of the truck would have hit her in the head. It was unbelievable.”

And it has Ruiz grateful for their bus driver, who has since switched his route around in order to pick up the girls without them having to cross the road.

A measure Cannon took to help ensure the children’s safety while also trying to make sure there isn’t any accident involving the bus period — from 2012 through 2018, there have been 20 crashes in the county involving buses according to data from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

“He’s amazing,” she said. “I couldn’t ask for a better bus driver. That’s somebody that loves to work with kids and stuff like that.”