Firefighter captures moment girl falls from moving bus

A four-year-old girl is lucky to be alive after she fell out of the back of a moving bus and smashed her face on the road.

The incident was filmed by Ryan Ciampoli, a volunteer firefighter who happened to be in the vehicle behind the bus in Harrison, Arkansas.

Footage shows the back door of the bus fling open with the girl hanging onto it.

She falls into the middle of the road but the bus does not stop.

Mr Ciampoli - who is also a qualified emergency medical technician - immediately stopped his car and went to help the girl, who appeared to be unconscious.

He said she started to wake up as he reached her and moved her from the road to a car park, where he kept her conscious and checked her vital signs.

"Then the shock kicked in in her little body and she started kicking and screaming and 'where's my mommy?' and things like that - stuff that is really heartbreaking," he told Fox News:

Paramedics arrived after five minutes and took the child to hospital, where she is expected to recover after surgery on a broken jaw.

The girl's mother told Fox she does not blame the bus driver for the incident and just wants to focus on her daughter's recovery.