Nine-year-old Anaiah Rucker is being hailed as a hero after saving her sister from being hit by a truck last month. Anaiah told The Today Show's Ann Curry today that she didn't think twice before pushing her little sister out of the path of the vehicle as the pair crossed the street in Madison, Georgia to get to the school bus stop.
Anaiah took the hit, instead, and lost a leg and a kidney for her bravery.
"I love her more than anything," Anaiah told Channel 2's Tom Jones of her five-year-old-sister, Camry. Anaiah said it was raining and her sweatshirt hood was covering her eyes as she and her sister crossed the road. The girls' mother, Andrea Taylor, witnessed her older daughter's act of bravery from the porch of their home, where she watches the girls catch the bus each morning.
"I saw the truck and I was like, 'No,'" Taylor told Channel 2. "I seen my daughter kinda snatch my 5-year-old back, and if it wasn't for that, my 5-year-old would have ... I don't think she would have made it." The driver wasn't charged after police decided he was not at fault.
Today, Anaiah told Curry that she doesn't feel she deserves to be called a hero. She said her sister "was too young to be hit like this, and if she got hit she wouldn't hardly be alive. She would be probably gone forever."
Anaiah might also not be alive if it weren't for bus driver Loretta Berryman. Berryman pulled over immediately and started performing CPR on Anaiah, who wasn't breathing. "I instructed her mom to hold her head while I gave mouth-to-mouth, chest compressions," Berryman told NBC News. "As she took a breath, my first thing was, 'Thank God.'"
Taylor recently lost her job and her car. The community held a BBQ to raise funds for Anaiah's medical bills and renovations needed to make her house handicap accessible. Thousands of classmates and Madison residents took to the streets to welcome Anaiah back when she got out of the hospital last week, after a month of care. You can contact United Bank in Madison to donate to a fund to help with the family's medical bills, which is in Anaiah's name.
"Anaiah has a really, really big heart," her mother said. Anaiah's grandmother told the Morgan County Citizen that her first words after regaining consciousness were, "Am I going to chorus today?" She's active in Sweet Home Baptist Church and the Boys and Girls Club in Madison.
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