Bus driver hailed as hero after getting bus off freeway

A bus driver is being hailed a hero after having a heart attack and dying on Interstate 10 Monday morning.

A much bigger tragedy may have been avoided when 74-year-old Los Paisanos bus driver Benjamin Galaviz-Gomez got his bus off the freeway and away from other drivers who could have been injured or killed when the bus came to a sudden halt.

“This gentleman had worked for the company some years back and then he came back,” said Luis Sarinana, a former El Paso County Commissioner who is now a consultant for Los Paisanos. “He started in April of this year and unfortunately this happened to him and our condolences to the family.”

Los Paisanos Autobuses is an El Paso company that takes customers, mostly from Mexico, to seven different states.

“The bus was empty he was the only one on the bus at that time,” Sarinana said.

Sarinana said Galaviz-Gomez, who had recently undergone a physical, was returning Monday morning from Dallas. Minutes after dropping a load of passengers and a co-driver in Downtown El Paso, he apparently suffered a heart attack on I-10 while returning his bus to the company garage, located near Cielo Vista Mall.

“As he was, I guess, trying to control the steering wheel and going through the heart attack, he was able to manage to pull that bus to the side,” Sarinana said.

A man who showed up at Los Paisanos garage did not want to be identified, but he told ABC-7 he considered Galaviz-Gomez his grandfather.

“That’s definitely a good thing (getting the bus off the freeway),” he said through tears. “Even until the last moment, he was able to stop, pull aside.”

As for why it took four hours to clear the wreck and open the freeway? Sarinana says crews were waiting for the medical examiner.