A group of South Hams students has been praised by police after rushing to help a family with a baby who flipped their car.

The sixth form students, who were on the way back from a symposium on global politics in Plymouth with their teacher, Paige Day, were following a car that suddenly veered off the A379 near Modbury.

Lottie Sutherland, Theo Cox, Jak O’Connell-Swindon, Madeleine Reynolds, Harry Usher, Rohan Bhate and Tom Foley, all Year 13 politics students, were in two cars travelling in convoy when the car in front of them, a 2016 Skoda Octavia, left the road on the first bend out of Modbury and rolled down the hill.

Lottie Sutherland explained: “The car just kept going straight rather than going round the corner and it just went off the side of the road and rolled about five times.

“Our teacher told us to call 999 but didn’t want us to go and help because, watching it, it looked like everyone in the car would have been killed.

“But before we had even picked up the phone, Jak was already sprinting past us and down the hill.”

Jak O’Connell-Swindon, a member of St John’s Ambulance and an aspiring paramedic, reacted immediately, with all his fellow students singling him out as “the hero” and saying he was “amazing”.

Lottie added: “He was driving the car behind us, so he managed to stop, get out and go before any of us really knew what was happening.

He reacted so fast he left his lights on and his battery died, it had to be jump-started after it was all over!”

Jak said: “The woman who was driving was already out of the car and was yelling saying she had a baby in the car, and the man, her husband who was the passenger, got out and grabbed the baby out of the back. The baby was fine and turned one this week.”

Rohan called 999 and said that the husband had blood across his chest but only from small scratches. Remarkably, all three escaped without serious injuries. In the baby’s case, the students put it down to him being in a modern car and a rear-facing, well-secured car seat.

Jak said: “Everything in the car had been thrown around all over the place but the baby was exactly where he should have been.”

While some of the Kingsbridge Community College students were looking after the family and giving first aid, the others were directing traffic.

Harry said: “Where the cars were stopped on the corner, we had to have about four of us to direct them round in a kind of convoy, passing messages between ourselves as when the road was clear and when we could let the next couple of cars through.”

The students stayed with the family and directed traffic until an ambulance arrived about an hour later. Rohan expressed his worry about the delay in paramedics arriving, saying, “if that had been as serious as it looked, they could have died before the ambulance got there”, and said the police arrived before the ambulance did.

The students gave up jackets and coats to keep the family warm, with Rohan having the foresight to have an umbrella in his bag, which they used to keep them dry as when it started raining - “and mum laughed at me for packing my umbrella that morning!” he joked.

PC Jane Gerrard, the first police officer on the scene, described the students as “amazing”. She said: “After seeing something horrendous and not knowing what they were going to see, they still rushed to help.

“They all just got on with it, not only those who were helping the family, but those who were directing traffic, which they did with such confidence. Every one of them played a really important role.

“They were amazing and they deserve a mention for being upstanding citizens.”

The three occupants of the car were taken to hospital to be checked over, but all remarkably escaped with no injuries.