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SCHOOL BUS CRASH REPORTS 2004
On bus, kids "were crying, panicking" Gary Kolek barely noticed the yellow school bus as it moved alongside him on Highway 40 (Interstate 64). As the two vehicles traveled side by side at a bit over 55 miles an hour, it was just another school bus on just another Monday morning.
Both drivers pushed, hard, on their brake pedals. "I could hear the bus's tires squealing; I could hear them lock up," said Kolek, 25, an IBM customer service representative on his way to work. He looked in his rearview mirror just in time to see the bus fishtail back and forth across the westbound lanes of the highway. He watched in disbelief as it struck the concrete median and bounced back into traffic before beginning to tip. "It was like, 'boom,' it was on its side and it was sliding on the pavement right toward me. It was the roof; I could see the roof of the bus coming directly at me." Aboard the bus, children from the city-county voluntary transfer program were being tossed like rag dolls. ShaNice Webb, 11, could see the terrified faces of her friends and could hear their screams. "They were crying, panicking," said ShaNice, a fifth-grader at Shenandoah Valley Elementary School in Chesterfield. "They were saying, 'I want to go home.'" As the bus came to a stop, ShaNice looked up to see a friend's face covered in blood. Kolek raced from his car and scrambled to the overturned bus. He pulled open the rear emergency door and could barely believe what he saw. "There were kids everywhere, blood everywhere, coats everywhere, book bags, everywhere," he said. One by one, he said, the children began spilling from the opening. Other highway commuters stopped their cars and rushed to help comfort the children before emergency crews arrived. The driver and all 26 students were rushed to hospitals, where only the driver and one student were reported seriously hurt. All of the children, ages 6 to 11, had been picked up earlier from bus stops in the city. The Missouri Highway Patrol identified the driver as Linda Gilley, 50, of St. Louis, who remained hospitalized in serious condition Monday evening after surgery at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur. Officials said she had been driving for the interdistrict transfer program 11 months. She had no record of traffic violations, the patrol said. Police identified the most seriously injured child as Mitchshaneka Russell, 8, a third-grader. She was in serious condition Monday night following surgery, hospital officials said. Police say Gilley told them that the bus was westbound on Highway 40 near Christian Brothers College high school about 8:30 a.m. when she was cut off by another vehicle. She said she had swerved to the left to avoid a collision and then jerked the bus to the right to correct. As she did, the bus flipped onto the driver's side and skidded several hundred feet. Kolek said he had noticed no other vehicle. A highway patrol report seemed to confirm Kolek's report that Gilley had swerved to avoid traffic that had stopped in front of her. Cpl. Jon Parrish of the patrol said, "This is a common occurrence when traffic ahead slows down and drivers don't give themselves enough time to react." Several children said the bus driver had been distracted, at least earlier in the trip, by unruly students. Nieama Hunter, 9, a third-grader, said the driver had asked the children several times to get out of the aisle and sit in their seats. Nieama said at one point the driver threatened not to let the children talk the rest of the week on the bus unless they behaved. Another student, Donna White, 8, a second-grader, said that immediately before the accident, the driver had told the children to clear the aisles of the bus. "People in the back kept getting up and switching seats," said Nieama, whose brother, Cantrell Hunter Jr., 7, a first-grader, also was on the bus. Nieama, whose back was injured, said a monitor previously rode the bus to help watch the children, but the monitor had been assigned to another bus. It was not immediately known whether the disciplinary problems had played a part in the accident. The accident blocked westbound traffic for nearly two hours as rescue workers scrambled to load the children into ambulances and clear the scene. Most of the youngsters got out through the rear of the bus, Kolek said. Authorities said some had fled through the broken bus windshield. The accident stunned many commuters, some of whom stopped their vehicles to help the children in the minutes before rescue crews arrived. "They had these little kids lined up in one area and I could see some of them bending down talking to them," said Dennis Mapes, of Chesterfield, who witnessed the scene as he was driving eastbound on the highway. "For these people to do what they were doing, it brought tears to my eyes." Bruce Hunter, Shenandoah Valley principal, spent most of the day Monday with the injured and their families at St. John's. Counselors from the Parkway School District went to St. John's, St. Luke's and Missouri Baptist hospitals, where the children were being treated. Fears
remain When asked if she would ride the bus Tuesday, she said, "I don't know. I'm still scared." Rachel was sitting in her assigned seat near the middle of the bus at the time of the accident. When the bus flipped onto its side, she was thrown across the aisle and into another seat, she said. Her mother, Suzanne Bates, said she understood her daughter's concern. "I'm going to work with her and not rush her," her mother said. "It will be an adjustment, for these kids and for us." Hunter, the principal, said he would ride with the students this morning. Debby Kealing, who will be president of the Shenandoah Valley PTO next year, arrived at the school after hearing news of the accident. "Maybe now, we'll revisit the seat belt issue," she said. Although Parkway has installed seat belts on its own school buses, Laidlaw said there were no seat belts on the bus. Martina Glenn, ShaNice Webb's mother, said she drives her two children to the bus stop every morning. "I always say the same thing: 'Have a good day,'" she said. "I felt very safe. I never would have imagined anything like this." By Bill Smith - Post-Dispatch
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