SCHOOL BUS CRASH REPORTS 2007

Quick Thinking Saved Kids in Bus Accident, Police Say
January 31, 2007

Grateful parents, some with tears in their eyes, gathered at the hospital Tuesday, around the Jefferson County school bus driver who is credited with saving their children's lives.

Police and school officials say Tina Stallings' quick reaction prevented the 26 students in her care from being seriously injured when a wrong-way driver collided with her bus on Highway 30 near Dittmer Catawissa Road.

"She did an excellent job of calming them down, and she kept her composure," said John Urkevich, superintendent of the Northwest R-1 School District.

Brandy Pedroley, whose son Tyler, 8, was among the passengers on the bus, summed up the feelings of many of the parents gathered in the emergency room hallway of St. Anthony's Medical Center when she told Stallings, "You did an amazing job."

Witnesses said Kenneth Greer, 35, of St. Clair, drifted into Stallings' lane around 8 a.m. To avoid a head-on crash, Stallings, 44, of Dittmer, swerved. Greer's older-model Buick struck the driver's side of the bus at what Stallings estimated to be around 60 mph.

Sgt. Al Nothum of the Missouri Highway Patrol said Greer, who has a criminal record dating to 1997, was expected to be charged with careless and imprudent driving and felony drug possession.

On the bus, kindergarten through sixth-grade students were headed for two schools in the Northwest district — Maple Grove Elementary and Cedar Hill Intermediate.

Stallings saw Greer's car heading for the bus as she rounded a curve. Then, just as the car hit the bus at a point behind the driver's seat, she swerved right onto the shoulder in an attempt to avoid the collision, but the shoulder dropped off down a steep ravine.

Stalling then swerved left to avoid rolling down the ravine, then back to the right to avoid oncoming traffic. Nothum said the bus skidded off the shoulder and flipped onto its side.

"If this school bus operator would have done anything differently, there would have been a couple of dead kids," Nothum said. "She did everything right. She kept the vehicle under control long enough so when it rolled over, she was in a safer area and her speed had slowed down so when it rolled, it only rolled over one time. It was a very amazing ride they took."

John Coffman, 50, of High Ridge, was driving behind Greer and stopped to help get children off the bus.

"I'll never forget the sound of those kids screaming when I came up to the back of that bus," he said. "When I opened the door, there were all these faces just staring at me."

Some of the kids on the bus were the children of Coffman's friends. They recognized their 6-foot-1-inch rescuer and asked, "Big John, are you going to get us out of here?"

The children lined up single file at Stallings' direction and headed toward the back of the bus.

Coffman said several of the students handed him their homework before allowing him to pull them out.

"They really wanted to make sure it got to school, I guess," he said.

Coffman and other drivers piled the students into their parked cars to keep them warm on a bitterly cold morning.

Two students were taken to the hospital in ambulances. Another school bus took the remaining students to the hospital as a precaution. Stallings went, too.

All were released by Tuesday afternoon.

Stallings was the last to leave the bus, as she always has been during the 14 years she has driven the bus for the Northwest district.

Initially, Stallings said, she was afraid the students' parents would be upset with her.

"All I could think was, 'Oh, my God, these parents will never trust you again,'" Stallings said Tuesday from the hallway outside the emergency room.

That's when another student and parent approached her wheelchair.

"You really did such a great job," the mother told her.

"I hope so," Stallings replied.

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