By admin 
PEORIA, AZ (AZFamily) — A school bus full of students came within feet of being struck by a train Wednesday morning at a Peoria intersection.
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Students captured video inside the bus as a train approached at full speed. The incident happened at the six-way intersection of Grand and Olive avenues.
“We were all scared, crying,” said Neli, who was on the bus.
Neli and a couple dozen of her summer school classmates watched as a train moved toward their school bus.
Mandi, whose three children were on the bus, said the videos they sent her were chilling.
“I think that my children are very lucky,” Mandi said. “Nauseous, it makes me feel sad. It makes me wonder what my kids were thinking at that point. What was going on in their heads? Did they feel that was their last moment?”
Bus went past railroad crossing stop line
The school bus crossed the railroad crossing stop line. Video shows the red-and-white striped crossing gates crashing into the roof of the bus as they tried to close.
Mandi believes the bus driver was trying to make a right-hand turn when she got too close to the crossing.
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“Nothing is worth more than somebody’s life. That extra second for the train you’re trying to beat, the light you’re trying to run, it’s not worth anybody’s life,” Mandi said.
The crossing gates remain bent from the impact.
Mandi said she is thankful that the only scar the children bear is emotional. But she wants to know why they were put in this position and what went wrong.
“What distracted her, what was on her mind to make her want to try to just drive through?” Mandi said. “Had she been two or three feet closer, it would have hit them.”
The Peoria Unified School District did not respond to questions about whether the bus driver was fired or whether the district is investigating what happened.
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