‘You Just Feel Empty': Family Speaks Out After 9-Year-Old Cancer Survivor Hit and Killed by Bus

The mom of a 9-year-old boy who was hit and killed by a school bus in January is speaking out for the first time following the loss of her beloved son.

Elyas Amyr Marshall-Rodriguez was fatally struck by the school bus around 4 p.m. local time on Jan. 16 shortly after exiting the vehicle at Waterford East Apartments in Orange County, Florida Highway Patrol previously said.

Six months later, Elyas’ mother, Ultra Marshall, and two older cousins opened up about the tragedy in an interview with NBC affiliate WESH. Ultra described life after her son’s death as “daily torture.”

“You just feel empty. Like a piece of your soul, a piece of your heart is just gone,” Marshall said.

The bus involved in the crash was stopped at a roundabout at the apartment complex when the Lawton Chiles Elementary student crawled underneath, according to a previous report from CBS affiliate WKMG-TV.

At the time, a family member said the child was attempting to retrieve a football when the incident occurred, per FOX affiliate WOFL.

Marshall told WESH she raced to the scene after learning about the crash from another mom, but police wouldn’t let her near the scene. Her son’s school later ca -

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lled with the bad news.

“There’s days that you want to cry all the time, but you can’t,” the mom explained. “And there are days where you just want to roll up on the floor and be in a ball and cry, and you can’t.”

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Elyas was a childhood cancer survivor, according to a GoFundMe campaign started for the child’s family, which has raised more than $35,000 in donations since the crash.

He was diagnosed at age 2 with Leukemia, which was in remission at the time of his death, according to Trenae Gayle, who organized the online fundraiser.

Now, Elyas’ family is working on starting a foundation and writing a children’s book to honor the 9-year-old boy’s life. 

They are also considering legal action and have started a petition on Change.org in hopes of getting public school districts to “install dash cams for the drivers to see an outside, side and back view to prevent further tragedy’s from occurring" again.

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