School bus crash death going to grand jury in July

From H-L:

FALMOUTH, Ky. --A published report said northern Kentucky prosecutors plan to present evidence to a grand jury next month in a crash between a school bus and a dump truck that killed a teenager.

The Enquirer's Kentucky editions reported Friday the case will go to a Pendleton County grand jury July 23.

Trucking company had safety violations

This from the H-L:

INVOLVED IN FATAL SCHOOL BUS CRASH

FALMOUTH --A trucking company that was involved in a school bus crash that killed one student and injured 12 people has violated federal and state safety regulations, a newspaper reported.

A review by the Kentucky Vehicle Enforcement agency found eight safety violations for XXL Trucking, according to The Kentucky Enquirer. Three violations for the West Liberty-based company were labeled critical and included drivers who failed to keep time sheets or records of duty status. Also, none of the four trucks was periodically inspected.

The vehicle enforcement agency conducts safety reviews when a company is involved in a fatal crash.

On May 1, a dump truck owned by XXL Trucking crashed into a school bus near Falmouth. Daniel Wood, 16, was killed. Also, 10 students and both drivers were injured...

Suit filed over fatal bus crash

This from the Enquirer:

'Parents are devastated'

after boy, 16, killed

FALMOUTH - 16-year-old Daniel Wood was a caring and attentive big brother to his 12-year-old brother, Travis, and 5-year-old sister, Jordan.

They were on the school bus with him when it was struck by a dump truck Thursday morning. Officials said Daniel was killed on impact.

Travis was sitting in front of his big brother when the truck struck. He helped get injured students off the bus and then tried to go back for Daniel, said Phil Taliaferro, an attorney for the family.

"The parents are devastated. It's just awful," he said. "This is a tragedy that, in their lives, is unparalleled." Taliaferro filed a lawsuit Friday, alleging negligence by the company and the driver...

...Taliaferro's lawsuit in Pendleton Circuit Court alleges negligence by the company and the driver. He filed for a court order to preserve company records about maintenance on the truck and Yulfo's training, personnel and cell-phone records. A hearing is Wednesday.
This year, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet conducted a routine safety check on Ky. 22, which included inspections of guardrails and road signs. No problems were detected, said Transportation Cabinet District 6 Spokeswoman Nancy Wood, who is not related to the victim.

She said 96 vehicle accidents have occurred on Ky. 22 between Williamstown and U.S. 27 since Jan. 1, 2005. Forty-five occurred in Grant County and 51 in Pendleton County.

Daniel was the only fatality, she said.

Capt. Keith Craycraft, commander of Kentucky State Police Post 6 in Dry Ridge, said troopers regularly patrol the road, which he said isn't any more dangerous than other curvy, rural roads in the area.

Residents of Ky. 22 said truck drivers and motorcyclists frequently speed there, but investigators have not determined whether speed was a factor in Thursday's fatal crash.

• Photos: Pendleton County bus crash

• Listen to emergency calls

More on Pendleton County School Bus Fatality

1 Dead, 12 Injured In Pendleton Co. School Bus Crash
Dozen People Sent To Hospital

FALMOUTH, Ky. -- One student was killed and a dozen more people were injured in a northern Kentucky school bus crash.

The crash happened Thursday morning shortly after 7 a.m. when the Pendleton County Schools bus and a dump truck passed each other on state Route 22 near Ballinger Road.

Authorities confirmed that 15-year-old Danny Wood was killed in the crash...

Pendleton Co. School Bus Crash
9 A.M. Live Report From Bus Crash Scene
Raw Sky 5: One Killed In School Bus Crash
Raw Video: 10am News Conference On Bus Crash
Images: Pendleton Co. School Bus Crash Scene
Noon Coverage: Pendleton Co. Crash Kills 1, Injures 12
Ground Video: School Bus Crash Scene

This from the KyPost.com:

Parent: Crash "A Tragic Ordeal"

Ricky Maxwell was sitting at the kitchen table of his Pendleton County home Thursday morning when he received a call that no parent ever wants to get.

On the line was his 15-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, who his wife had just dropped off to take the bus to Pendleton County High School.Over the phone, Elizabeth said the bus had been in an accident.

Maxwell, wearing only pajamas and a bathrobe, jumped into his car and headed to the scene.

He's been a paramedic for 14 years and thought he could help.When he arrived on the scene, he saw a triple-axle dump truck on its side. Down the road was the school bus with the rear portion of the driver's side of the vehicle heavily damaged.Ten injured students were in a nearby house and police were evaluating their conditions as life squads were heading to the scene...

This from KyPost.com:

State To Investigate Crash

The fatal school bus crash in Pendleton County will be examined by state education officials to ensure there are no shortcomings in state transportation safety standards.

Kentucky Department of Education transportation safety officials were en route to Pendleton County Thursday to talk with the driver of the bus involved in the fatal crash and school officials, according to department spokeswoman Lisa Gross.

She said such reviews are routine after a serious school bus accident and that they helps the department know if standards for buses need to be reexamined, [o]r if there are problems with bus routes or other concerns to be dealt with at the state level.She said the department does not keep a central database on bus accidents around the state but that the state’s bus safety record is good.

She said the last death stemming from a school bus accident occurred some four or five years ago in western Kentucky in a crash in which the school bus rolled over and a student was ejected...

...Gross said the Pendleton County accident could prompt calls for seat belts on school buses -- something not required in Kentucky. She said the commonwealth follows the federal recommendation on seat belts, which is to not equip school buses with them...

Hat Tip to Brad @ KSBA:

Student Killed in Pendleton School Bus/Dump Truck Crash

This from the Enquirer, Photo by Patrick Reddy:

1 killed in school bus crash

PENDLETON COUNTY - A teenage boy was killed this morning after a dump truck sideswiped his school bus on Ky. 22 around 7 a.m.

The accident occurred on a rural stretch of Ky. 22 near Ballinger Road.

Residents of the area said the westbound dump truck hit the end of the eastbound school bus in a curve in the rural, two lane road. The rear driver's side of the school bus suffered extensive damage.One student on the bus was killed. The 10 other students on the bus were taken by ambulance to St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Grant County. Their injuries were described as minor. Both drivers were also taken to the hospital. All had been treated and released by 10:30 a.m.

Christa Moore, spokesperson for St. Elizabeth, said the children ranged in age from 5 to 16 years old." Any time you're dealing with children, there is a lot of emotion that goes into it," Moore said. "They were all scared."

During a news conference this morning, Pendleton County Sheriff C.W. "Craig" Peoples declined to discuss details of the accident and would not confirm that the person who was killed was a student on the bus. He said both the bus driver and dump truck driver will be tested for drugs and alcohol, which is standard procedure in accidents of this nature....

...Dina Dennie heard the crash while she and her kids were getting ready in their house around 7 a.m. Her 17-year-old daughter Sadie ran outside and was the first person on the scene. She brought the injured children inside their house while her mother called 911 and the school, Dina Dennie said.

"I could feel my body go weak. I heard the kids screaming, 'Help me! Help me!'," she said...

Stop the Bus...Save the Kids...Do Some Time in Saturday Detention

Student disciplined

after stopping out-of-control school bus

School bus driver falls out of seat

Amanda Rouse wasn't supposed to be on the bus with 40 elementary school students, but the high school student managed to stop the careening vehicle after the driver fell out of her seat.

And although the 15-year-old Marina High School student averted a possible tragedy, she is being disciplined by school authorities for being on the bus in the first place.

Rouse was sitting behind the driver's seat and pulled the emergency brake when driver Christine L. Graves fell out of her seat and down the stairs as she made the turn in Seaside about 8 a.m. Wednesday...

This from the San Jose Mercury.

5-year old killed by School Bus

This from the Paducha Sun (subscription):

SYMSONIA, Ky. — Keeton Mathis loved to help out.

He would work with his great-grandmother in the garden or just as happily make chocolate oatmeal cookies with her.

He was curious.

On a trip to Pizza Inn with his great-aunt on Thursday he pointed to a passing car hauler and asked how the cars got all the way to the top.

He was smart.

He could spell his name and was learning to write it at Clark’s River Baptist Church’s preschool. He knew people’s telephone numbers by heart.

He was funny.

He joked with his pastor at Symsonia United Methodist Church about a certain kind of candy he liked to pick out of a jar after the children’s sermon each week. He asked Santa Claus for a Kirby vacuum cleaner.

Keeton Mathis, 5, of Symsonia died Thursday afternoon at Lourdes hospital in Paducah after a school bus hit him while crossing the road in front of his home on Symsonia Road, about one mile east of Symsonia.

Keeton was crossing back to his home from the mailbox at 4:22 p.m., Graves County Chief Deputy Sheriff Dewayne Redmon said. The bus was dropping off his 13-year-old sister. Students from Graves County High School and Graves County Middle School were on board, Graves County schools spokesman Paul Schaumburg said.

Symsonia firefighters rushed to the scene, along with the Mayfield-Graves County Emergency Medical Service. They performed CPR on Keeton but could do nothing to save him.

Keeton’s body will undergo an autopsy today in Madisonville.

The sheriff’s department and state police continued to investigate the scene where Keeton was hit. Officers had not released the bus driver’s name late Thursday.

Family and friends quickly gathered at the hospital, hugging, crying and telling stories about Keeton that made them laugh and then cry some more.

His great-aunt, Brenda Thomasson, recalled his love of the movie “Annie” and how excited he was to see the play at the Carson Four Rivers Center a few weeks ago.

Keeton turned 5 on Saturday and was going to have a party this weekend with friends at Lakeland Gymnastics. He was excited about getting to jump on the trampoline.

“He was a delightful little child,” Thomasson said. “He’s touched a lot of lives in five years. I don’t know what we’re going to do without him.”

A frightened girl asked the driver to slow down ...But he didn't

This from The Washingtron Post

Raw Video: School Bus Crashes in Maryland

School Bus Overturns in

Prince George's County Maryland

44 Students Hospitalized

With Minor Injuries;

Driver Is Accused of Speeding

School bus 1156 was going too fast. That much was clear to the 44 students heading to William Wirt Middle School in the Riverdale area just before 9 a.m. yesterday.

A frightened girl asked the driver to slow down, four passengers recalled. But he didn't, the four said. And the students received an unpleasant lesson in physics: The top-heavy bus, whipping into a left turn from Riverdale Road onto 61st Place, tipped over onto its side, grinding to a halt and throwing screaming children into a heap.

The students and the driver were sent to hospitals with injuries that were not life-threatening, police and school officials said. Antonio Nate Robinson, 46, was charged with speeding, negligent driving and not wearing a seat belt, said Officer Henry Tippett, a spokesman for the Prince George's County police. The violations could result in a total fine of $435 and six points on his driver's license.

Robinson, of Hyattsville, had five traffic violations in Maryland from 1985 to 1992, according to court records. The violations included failing to obey a stop sign and driving the wrong way down a one-way street. In Virginia in 1998, he was ticketed for going 70 to 74 mph in a 55 mph zone.
The Maryland violations were considered minor and old enough not to prevent him from being hired as a bus driver by the Prince George's County school system in August 2006.

Robinson's record "certainly came up during his screening," said John White, a spokesman for the school system. "There were no traffic accidents, so to speak. . . . He had 14 years between '92 and 2006. We thought that was a significant time with a clean driving record, and we thought with training he could be a responsible driver." ...

Should School Buses Have Seatbelts?

Money and Enforcement Issues Add to the Safety Question

Ever wonder if the present compartmentalization system is safe enough for school children on school buses? No seat belts. No side protection. Children in padded seats spaced close together, like eggs in a carton.

When a former Grant County bus driver was sentenced to 22 years in prison for a near fatal wreck (while she was under the influence of drugs) many Kentuckians saw the video taken by the bus camera. Students were shaken violently and several were seriously injured.

Aside from safe vehicle and a sober driver can the busses that carry school children be made safer?

Some have suggested seat belts for all children but there is reason to believe that might even produce more - and more serious - injury to children. Texas recently required seat belts and shoulder restraints on their schoo busses.

Check out the crash test video and compare for yourself the present compartmentalization system, seat belts and seat belts with shoulder restraint.

This from Edmunds.

Should children use seatbelts on school buses? Think this is a no-brainer? Not so fast. Some experts say yes, others say no, and the government's highway safety agency hasn't been able to make a decision.The government agency involved, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA), invited all points of view to be heard at a roundtable in July 2007.

Here's what we found out:
Safest Form of Transportation
First, school buses, the big yellow variety, are incredibly safe.
According to NHTSA, of the 23.5 million school children who travel an estimated 4.3 billion miles on 450,000 yellow school buses each year, on average, six die in crashes. At the summit, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters asked, "How can we make this number lower still, so that no parent ever has to hear...that the cherished child they sent off in the bus...is never coming home...even if it requires opening up old decisions and challenging old assumptions?

"In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) found an additional 815 fatalities related to school transportation per year. But here's the difference: 75 percent of those school children were traveling in passenger cars, not school buses, and just over half of those were teenagers driving themselves to school. Another 22 percent of the 815 fatalities occurred during walking and bicycling.

Only 2 percent were school bus-related — referring to children who were hit by buses.

Robin Leeds, spokesperson for the National School Transportation Association, which represents private school bus contractors, says, "The focus on seatbelts ignores the fact that we lose 800 children going to and from school in some other mode. Our challenge is not to make kids in school buses safer. Our challenge is to make kids safer, and the way to do that is to put them in school buses."

Can Buses Be Made Safer Still?

Fatalities aren't the only measure of safety. A NHTSA crashworthiness study of large school buses found that properly used lap/shoulder belts would mean fewer head injuries compared to unbelted passengers. (Lap belts alone, though, showed some potential to cause head and spinal injuries to young children.)

In 1977, federal regulation mandated that large school buses must have strong, closely spaced seats with energy-absorbing seatbacks, a built-in protection called "compartmentalization" that is based on the way crash forces are distributed. The buses were exempted from carrying lap belts. But the government required that small buses (with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less) carry lap belts, because the design and weight of the smaller vehicles would not offer protection similar to large ones.

Despite these measures, government accident studies from the 1980s say that passengers are still endangered in large school buses when they crash with an even bigger or heavier vehicle, such as a loaded tractor-trailer truck, or if they roll over an embankment....

Grant County school bus driver injures 17 in crash, gets 22 years

WILLIAMSTOWN - As guards escorted Angelynna Young out of a courtroom Thursday to begin serving a 22-year sentence (video) for causing a near-fatal school bus crash, she turned to some of the injured students and said she was sorry...

"It is too late to say you are sorry," said Steve Shively, whose son Cody was one of two children who received head injuries in the wreck. "You should have thought of that the morning you got on the bus. I'm just thoroughly disgusted."

Authorities said Young, 29, of Williamstown, had little sleep and illegal drugs in her system on Jan. 17 when she caused the worst bus wreck the region had seen since the 1988 Carroll County bus crash that killed 27 people. A drunken driver going the wrong direction on Interstate 71 slammed into a church bus returning from Kings Island.

The wreck has been an emotional event for rural Grant County because residents believe their trust was violated, Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Crawford said.

"You don't put your kid on the bus and not feel confident in the school bus driver," Crawford said. "It is like not having confidence in a police officer, firefighter or doctor. There are certain people in society you have to believe in."

About 30 people attended the emotional hearing in Grant Circuit Court and watched a video taken aboard the bus as Young ran off U.S. 25, overcorrected and struck a utility pole.

"The day of the accident was the worst day of my life," Steve Shively said. "You don't know if your son is going to live. ... Doctors will not tell you. All you can do is sit and cry. That's all we did, basically, for three months was to sit and cry."

This from the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Grant County School Bus driver accepts plea deal

Crash sent 17 kids to hospital

Two days after refusing a plea deal that would send her to prison for a minimum of 10 years and two months, the 29-year-old walked into a Grant County courtroom Friday afternoon and accepted the same deal.

The Grant County school bus driver who crashed her bus into a pole Jan. 17, sending all 17 students on board to hospitals, pleaded guilty to 25 charges of drug possession, wanton endangerment and assault. In exchange, Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Crawford recommended a 22-year sentence with eligibility for parole after 122 months.

Cody Shively, 12, of Dry Ridge, was one of two children who received head injuries in the crash. He sat in the front row of the courtroom, wearing a helmet to protect his skull.

Cody said he "wanted her to stay in prison for 100 years."

After the crash, investigators found more than 40 bottles of prescription medications in Young's Williamstown apartment. A urine test revealed drugs, including cocaine, marijuana and the prescription painkiller Darvocet, in her system at the time of the wreck.

She had only slept about five hours the night before the crash, investigators said.

This from the Cincinnati Enquirer, photo by PATRICK REDDY.

School Bus Driver To Go To Trial

The driver of a school bus that crashed and injured 17 students in January will go to trial after an expected plea deal in the case fell through Wednesday.

Angelynna Young, 28, of Williamstown was asked by the judge in the case if she agreed to a plea deal because she was guilty, but Young said no. At that point, the Commonweath's attorney withdrew the plea deal, and Young's trial was set to begin next Tuesday.

Young was driving a Grant County school bus Jan. 17 when it went off the road and struck a utility pole. Two students were taken to area hospitals in critical condition after the crash, while Young and 15 other students were treated for minor injuries. The crash happened in Grant County.

This from WLEX-TV.