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Mar 12, 2008 9:55 am US/Central
Dallas PD: Mom Throws Kids Onto I-30, Then Jumps
Police Are Still Investigating Why The Woman Threw Her Children From The Jim Miller Bridge
All 3 Survive Drop
Compiled from staff reports
DALLAS (CBS 11 News) ―
A mother faces two counts of attempted capital murder after she dropped her two children more than 20 feet from the Jim Miller Bridge off Interstate 30 in Dallas.
Police do not know what prompted Khandi Busby to toss the children 22 feet over the railing and then jump herself, but consider the children lucky to have escaped death.
Officials do know, however, that the trio was in a car with the woman's father who stopped to tend to his vehicle.
According to reports, the 27-year-old woman grabbed her sons -- ages 6 and 8 -- and got out of the car, walked over to the bridge then threw the children off the bridge about 6:30 a.m. before she jumped.
A driver who called 911 described a chaotic scene as cars swerved to avoid the falling family. Sondra Plunk, 44, commuting to her job at a landscaping company, said one of the boys fell in front of a van one lane over and about a car length in front of her.
The van fishtailed as its driver slammed the brakes and swerved around the boy. She said the boy landed on his side and then immediately popped up onto his hands and knees, staring directly into the van's headlights.
"I saw his face," Plunk said of the boy. "I saw the fear in his face. He rolled to all fours. Knowing he was still alive, knowing he was still conscious and he had the presence of mind to think, `My God, I have to get out of here."'
"Considering the traffic coming down on a work day, the kids are very, very lucky they are not more severely injured," a police spokesman said Wednesday morning.
"They are not part of the adult world and they don't know all the issues that take place in the adult world," said Sgt. David Burroughs with the Dallas Police Department.
During a later news conference, Lt. C.L. Williams said Child Protective Services had investigated Busby previously, and added she has a criminal record. None of the children were injured by passing vehicles, Williams added. Their non-life-threatening injuries were from the fall, he stressed.
The children remain at Children's Medical Center in Dallas while their mother was in fair condition at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
