Crema (Italy) (AFP) - "He let us on to the bus and immediately barricaded us in," a teaching assistant said, recounting how the school bus hijacking in Italy unfolded before 51 children escaped as the driver torched the vehicle. "I was a second away from death," Tiziana Magarini told AFPTV on Thursday, her eyes still red and her voice unsteady a day after the harrowing incident. On Wednesday, a 10-minute bus trip turned into a 40-minute nightmare for schoolchildren in Crema, east of Milan, after their driver hijacked the vehicle and tried to drive it to a Milan airport.