A guardian angel must have been looking after Danny Lloyd and at least one I-75 motorist Friday morning.

Lloyd, 57, driving from the Cincinnati area to Florida, was in his pickup truck under the Northside Drive bridge at the exact moment a charter bus packed with college baseball players plunged onto the interstate.

Mike Morris/AJC (ENLARGE)

Danny Floyd, whose truck was hit by the bus as it fell to the interstate, was traveling from Cincinatti to Florida.

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Floyd said he looked up and saw what he thought was a "big slab of concrete" falling from the bridge, right in front of him.

"I just closed my eyes and stepped on the gas," said Floyd, a Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient from Frostburg, Md.

The falling bus grazed the roof of Floyd's truck, putting enough weight on the pickup that it pushed the front bumper to the asphalt and tore it off.

Floyd, uninjured, got his truck stopped about a quarter-mile past where the bus landed.

The falling bus also grazed a second vehicle, a Chevrolet SUV that sustained a large dent on the back hatch and had the rear window shattered.

That motorist, who was not injured, was not immediately identified.