A NEWPORT schoolboy has been praised by his teachers after dialling 999 for an elderly lady who had fallen in front of a bus.

Earlier this year Maxwell Nyamunda was walking back to St Julian’s School after a lunchtime outing with five friends when they found the unknown woman lying in the road, apparently having fallen in front of a bus while trying to get on it.

The driver had stopped the bus at the junction of Richmond Road and Caerleon Road and a group of adults crowded round the woman, but none had a mobile phone. Maxwell, 14, he called the emergency services.

“It was the first thing that came into my head – to stop and see if she was OK,” said Maxwell, who described how the lady was bleeding from her lip and head.

“My friends were concerned as well. I called 999 and asked her questions and told them all the information, as she was able to speak.

“Some of the people went into the nearby shops to get a chair for her to sit on, so they told us to go back to school,” said the St Julian’s pupil, who dreams of becoming a civil engineer and enjoys playing the guitar and bass guitar.

The humble youngster, who lives with his family in Somerton, said he’d never experienced anything like it before.

“It was just what I had to do,” he said of his efforts to help. “The ambulance staff called me back later to ask if I was the one who had dialled 999 and I told my teacher I had to go and speak to them on the phone, she said ‘well done’ for helping.

“I told my family, they were quite proud, they would’ve wanted me to stop.”

The school was contacted by the lady’s daughter who said sadly her mother died two days after the fall, but praised Maxwell as “a credit to your school and his generation”.

Maxwell’s head of house Jo Easter-Thomas said: “Maxwell is polite, bright, kind, caring and an inspiration. We are very proud of him.”