The relatively simple act of boarding a bus with his track and field teammates has become a test of courage for Middle College Prep distance runner Dae'Breon Kendrick.
Last week, he found himself sitting two rows from the back of a bus heading for a Crosstown League dual meet, and it made him nervous.
Teammates helped him through his anxiety by talking to him and making him laugh, distracting him from the uncomfortable memories of a tragic accident one month ago.
"I didn't realize it until I was on the bus, but I sat exactly where I was sitting on the other bus," Kendrick said.
On the morning of April 10, Kendrick, 17, was wearing neon green running shoes, shorts and a sweater over a flannel shirt as he hopped aboard a bus at Union Station. He and 47 other people were headed to Humboldt State University in Northern California, part of an orientation program for students from low-income families to see the campus of the school that had already accepted them.
They were all headed north on Interstate 5 in Orland, Calif., when, at just past 5:30 p.m., a FedEx tractor-trailer coming the other way veered across the freeway median and struck the bus head-on. Ten people were killed, including five students.
Kendrick tells a chilling story of survival.
"Right before the crash, I heard people saying, 'Watch out!' " he said. "I stood up to see what they were talking about and that's when I see the truck coming and hit the bus. I flew two or three rows forward. I hit my chin."
At first, Kendrick said he thought it was something of a routine accident. He expected that the bus driver would exchange information with the truck driver and that would be it. But he rapidly realized otherwise.
"Then I started to see people running," he said, "and I thought they were just panicking. Then I started to see fire.
"I was in the aisle on the ground. I got up real quick. The first thought was [to] rush to the back because the fire was in the front. I see people at the back window and they seem to have trouble opening it. One emergency window was open but it was crowded, so I guess it was instinct or something took over me to open my emergency window. And I said, 'This way,' and jumped out and people followed."
Kendrick spent the night in a hospital. He received stitches on his chin, his jaw was injured and he had cuts and bruises on his legs. He also had a concussion. He caught a flight home the next day, and was greeted at Los Angeles International Airport by his mother, uncle, two brothers and cousin. They were in tears and offering hugs. Kendrick said he was just glad to be home.
He returned to school the following Monday, deciding he wanted things to return to normal as quickly as possible. Classmates at the small, close-knit school located on the campus of Los Angeles Southwest College offered support.
Two weeks after the accident, Kendrick said he started to have trouble sleeping. He received help from counselors but missed two weeks of physical training while recovering from his injuries.
Getting into a car was uncomfortable. He sits in the back seat.
Then there was that bus trip, his first since the accident. All day he thought about it and didn't know if he could do it.
"I put on my seat belt," he said. "My friends distracted me."
He competed in the 1,600- and 3,200-meter runs that day at his first track meet of the year. He finished second in each race.
He's going to ride another bus on Friday for the Crosstown League prelims at Diego Rivera High.
Kendrick loves to run and plans to attend Humboldt State in the fall and major in marine biology.
He said one lesson he learned from the bus crash was that "there are people who are going to be there for you even if they don't know you or aren't your best friend. They're going to be there for you in times of need."
He still hasn't forgotten a student who lent him a cellphone so that Kendrick could call his family and let them know he was OK after the crash. Kendrick had a phone, but it had been plugged into the bus, charging the battery.
He hopes running will help him heal and move forward to normalcy.
He believes his training in sports helped him to use his instincts to get out of the bus.
"I focused," he said, "on what I had to do."
eric.sondheimer@latimes.com
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