Bus Accident Lawyer

A five-year old child was killed on Wednesday outside of his Elementary school when he was struck by a city bus. The child’s identity has not been released pending notification of his family members, but he was apparently a student at the Tuolomne Elementary School near Ceres, California, in Modesto. The child, a boy, was apparently trying to reach his mother on the other side of the street and entered the road without using a crosswalk. The city bus struck him without the driver having seen him. The driver stopped immediately upon hearing the sound of the collision.

According to parents on the scene, the school is located on a small street that breaks into chaos each afternoon as children are dismissed. Though there is a crosswalk and parents and children are counseled to use it, few do. Many parents voice the opinion that the situation was an accident waiting to happen. Others questioned the wisdom of having a city bus traverse a school zone. According to Modesto City Schools spokeswoman Becky Fortuna, “Schools consistently remind families about traffic safety; beginning at back-to-school night and continuing throughout the year in newsletters and letters home.” Though the school’s officials did not make a statement about the incident, the district Superintend of the district, Pam Able, said, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family. Grief counselors are on site and will continue to be on site as long as they are needed.”

The bus was a Modesto Area Express bus. According to witnesses on the scene it was driving very slowly when the student saw his mother on the opposite side of the road and dashed into the street in front of the oncoming bus. The driver stopped at the sound of the child being struck by the front of his vehicle, pinning the child under the wheels and leaving onlookers struggling to try to help. The bus was eventually rolled backwards.

One resident of the street, Nancy Haverly, indicated that she has been concerned about the safety issue for a long time. “Parents are parked on this side of the street, and kids run across to them instead of going to the crosswalk. It’s a free-for-all to get into the cars.” She said that her husband Gary had run to the scene to attempt to perform CPR but was unable to because of the child’s position under the bus. Her husband said, “It’s asinine for a city bus to go through the school zone.”

A bus that was being driven from New York City to the state of Georgia was involved in a serious accident this week when it ran off the road in northern Virginia and flipped. There were four passengers who were seriously injured in the incident.

The accident took place on Monday evening on Interstate 95, where it was driving southbound to its intended destination in Doraville, Georgia.  There were fifty eight passengers on board the vehicle at the time of the accident, and five required attention at local hospitals. Four were reportedly seriously injured, but none of the passengers’ injuries were considered life threatening, according to Sgt. Frederick Tyler of the Virginia State Police. All 58 were taken via school bus to local hospitals to provide them with warmth and shelter.

According to police spokeswoman Corinne Geller, it was snowing on the evening of the accident, and the weather was definitely a factor in the accident; the main cause of the incident was that the driver was driving far too fast for existing conditions. Also of concern was the fact that the driver, fifty-year old Qilong Xiao of Flushing, New York, was unable to speak English. He was charged with reckless driving and was taken to the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford County, where he was held on $5,000 unsecured bond.

The bus is owned and operated by Pandora Bus Company, a motor coach company that provides inexpensive transport from New York and other urban destinations. Pandora’s parent company is Indianapolis-based Princess Tours.

According to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration records, Princess does not have any record of previous collisions and has required no interventions for violations it has committed, but the company does have a record of employing drivers who have been problematic. Three of them have been cited for speeding, with one of those unable to understand or speak English, a requirement for motor coach drivers who are responsible for carrying passengers from state to state. In the case of the Pandora Bus accident on Monday evening, Qilong Xiao was also unable to speak English, and the police had to bring in a translator in order to communicate with him.

It took over 24 hours for the bus company to provide arrangements for a replacement bus to take the rest of the passengers to their scheduled destination in Georgia.

An accident between a school bus and two motorcyclists has ended with both cyclists being killed in Wentzville, Missouri, forty miles outside of St. Louis. According to Missouri State Highway Patrol there were no children on board the school bus when the accident took place, just before seven in the morning.

The accident took place on Highway A between 61 and Parr Road. According to police, the motorcycles were traveling southbound on Route A in a group of three when the bus driver, 52-year old Pamela Love, drove out of the bus depot near the Westgate Business Center and drove into them while trying to execute a left turn across the highway onto Northbound Route A, directly into the path of the oncoming motorcycles. Two of the three cyclists struck the driver’s side of the bus and were killed at the scene. The dead include 43-year old Mathew Adam of Bowling Green, who was driving a 2011 Kawasaki Ninja, and 22-year old Jacob Boedeker of Warrenton who was driving a 2005 Honda CBR 600. The third motorcyclist, 25-year old Adam Meyer of Warrenton, was driving with the other two cyclists. He struck the accident debris, sending his motorcycle to the ground and ejecting him, but he was not injured. The driver of the bus is an 8-year veteran of the school district’s bus route and was reportedly moderately injured in the accident. She was taken to a local hospital for treatment.

As a result of the accident, several other school buses were unable to leave the bus depot, requiring buses that had already departed to run two routes in order to get students to school. Route A was closed as several hours a result of the accident investigation. According to police, there is no traffic signal at the intersection where the accident took place. There is no word as to whether Love has previously been involved in any accidents or whether any other incidents have taken place at this location. Accident investigators will be looking into the speed at which the motorcycles were travelling, as well as whether the driver exercised appropriate caution in gauging the distance between herself and the cyclists.

A school bus that was transporting a high school baseball team to a scheduled  game was involved in a fatal accident with an SUV in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.

According to State Police Trooper 1^st Class Stephen Hammons, the SUV was being driven by 36-year old Ladonna Cheatham when it experienced a tire failure that caused her to lose control of her vehicle. The automobile crossed out of its lane on U.S. 90 near Louisiana 317, crossed over the median and directly into oncoming traffic travelling in the opposite direction.  The vehicle collided head on with the bus.

The woman was transporting several passengers, including a 6-year old girl, a 14-year old boy, a 16-year old boy and a 17-year old boy. The driver and three of the four children were not wearing seat belts and were ejected from the vehicle. They were declared dead at the scene. The 17-year old victim was wearing his seat belt and sustained only moderate injuries, which were treated at a nearby hospital.

The bus was carrying thirty students and five adults including the driver. Seven of the teenagers and a 23-year old man from Lafayette were also taken to local hospitals, though none of the injuries were reported to have been serious.

According to witnesses, the accident took place just before noon as the baseball team was headed to Berwick. The SUV was a 2004 Kia Sorento. Its left rear tire blew as it was traveling westbound on U.S. 90 and the school bus was headed eastbound. The 40-year old driver of the bus, Amy Dole of Sunset, Louisiana, was not injured. She was reported to have been wearing a seatbelt.

According to Angela Morrison of the Lafayette Parish School System, following the crash all of the players’ families were contacted and the driver was tested for substances including alcohol.  Morrison said, “As in all accidents involving LPSS buses, the driver will be tested for alcohol or other substances but at this time we have no reason to believe the bus driver to have been at fault. In fact, State Police have indicated to us that her actions likely prevented greater injury to her passengers. We are deeply saddened by this tragic loss of life and our hearts go out to the family of the victims.”

A 59-year old tour bus operator who was killed in a crash with a jackknifed trailer is being praised posthumously for his expert handling of a dangerous situation.

Darnell Hannah of Millstone, New Jersey was operating the tour bus for Triple D Travel, carrying 31 passengers to sites in Sugarbush and Stowe, Vermont when his vehicle crested a hill on state Route 22A in West Haven, 60 miles south of Burlington, and came upon the trailer which was blocking the road. In attempting to avoid crashing into the vehicle the driver lost control and crashed into the roadside guard rails and the trailer. The driver was trapped in the trailer’s wreckage and died as a result of his injuries. Of the 31 other people on the bus, two were reported to have suffered moderate injuries while others were said to have sustained minor injuries. The majority of the injured, as well as the driver, were taken to Rutland Regional Medical Center, while others were taken to Porter Hospital in Middlebury. A spokesperson for Rutland Hospital indicated that one passenger had been admitted overnight while the others were released. Porter Hospital released no information on the crash victims that it attended to.

According to police the vehicle was driving north to the two ski resort areas at the time of the crash. The owners of the tour bus company, Triple D Travel of New Jersey said through spokesman Thomas Fay that their driver’s actions at the time of the accident had saved the lives of passengers. “Based on various accounts, his skilled bus operation prevented serious injury to many of his bus passengers as he faced a 53 foot tractor trailer blocking the entire roadway.”

Little information is available about the trucking company or the driver of the truck. Police indicate that the truck was owned by JP Logistics and was transporting coffee products when it jackknifed while it was heading south on Vermont’s Route 22A.  Roads were covered with ice at the time of the crash, a factor that police indicate contributed to the tragedy. Vermont police treated the accident scene as a mass casualty incident, calling on several emergency response units to assist. The bus driver was the father of 11 children.

A horrific bus crash that claimed the lives of 14 passengers has resulted in the suspension of all 228 of vehicles in the same company’s fleet.

The bus company in question is GV Florida Transport, and this is the second accident that the country has suffered in the last few months. In the most recent accident, the bus conductor has indicated that the bus had loose brakes. He survived by jumping off of the bus moments before it plunged into a 100-foot deep ravine.

The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board says that the bus was carrying a license plate that was not its own in order to use it to make money as a vehicle for hire. There were also other problems with the vehicle’s title which indicates that Florida Transport didn’t have a license to use it at all.

The Philippine comedian Arvin “Tado” Jimenez was killed in the crash, along with a musician, an artist and nearly a dozen others. There were 32 injuries including the conductor and the bus driver.

Just over a month ago an equally tragic accident took place when a Don Mariano transit bus tumbled from the Skyway and landed on a van. That accident killed 19 people, and in that accident it was also discovered that the bus was carrying fraudulent licensing and ownership information. At the time the LTFRB indicated that they would begin to pay closer attention and exercise stricter control over the safety of passenger buses.

The suspension of the GV Florida fleet is to last for thirty days and is aimed at allowing time for the LTFRB to thoroughly investigate and see whether the company’s license needs to be completely revoked or cancelled or whether a suspension is in order. The license that the bus was carrying had actually been issued to a bus from the Mountain Province Cable Tours Company, which has also been issued a suspension order. That company only operates ten vehicles.

The suspension order provides both companies with 72 hours in which they can submit reasons why their operating licenses should not be suspended. They have also been given notice of a required appearance at a public hearing into the issue. Failure to appear will not delay the case – it will only act as a waiver allowing decisions to be made based on the existing records.

A shuttle bus headed from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to a U.S. Army base crashed, killing a 28-year old soldier originally from Skokie, Illinois.

The 24-seat bus was carrying ten passengers, all soldiers, on Interstate 5 near Tacoma in the late afternoon, when the shuttle bus driver apparently lost control of the van. On board the bus was Private Reymon B. Tolentino, who had been assigned to assist in the transport of members of his unit. According to Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Sowers, spokesman for the U.S. Army 7th Infantry Division, the unit had just arrived at the airport after having returned from deployment in Afghanistan.

Witnesses report that the van was driving in a southbound direction and had nearly reached Joint Base Lewis-McChord when it suddenly veered and hit a concrete barrier and light pole on the left side of the highway. The bus kept moving but hit the barrier again before coming to a stop on the shoulder. None of the passengers were wearing seat belts, as the van was not equipped with them.

At the time that emergency responders arrived at the scene, Private Tolentino was not conscious. He was taken to nearby Tacoma General Hospital and pronounced dead a short time later.

In addition to Tolentino, a 34-year old soldier from Texas also sustained injuries and was taken to the same hospital in serious condition. His full recovery is expected. Minor injuries were noted in two additional soldiers who were also taken to the hospital.

The cause of the crash is not yet known, though investigators are working hard to determine why the shuttle bus driver lost control. By all accounts neither the weather nor road conditions played a part in the crash, and the shuttle bus driver, age 66, was tested and found not to have been impaired at the time of the incident.

Private Tolentino had entered active duty early last year as a combat engineer after having completed basic training in Missouri at Fort Leonard Wood. He was part of the 22^nd Engineer Clearance Company, 14^th Eng. Battalion, 555^th Eng. Brigade, 7^th Infantry division and was part of the rear detachment duty. During his short tenure in the Army he had already been awarded the Army Achievement Medal, the Global War on Terror Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.

A team bus carrying the women’s basketball team from the U.S. Military Academy Army was involved in an accident that sent the entire team to local hospitals for evaluation, and postponed the team’s scheduled game against Lehigh University. The team was travelling on a charter bus when they were rear-ended by a tractor-trailer. The driver of the tractor trailer was reportedly injured as well.

The accident took place on Route 33 North in Bethlehem Township, Pennsylvania. The team had just completed a pre-game practice session at Lehigh’s Stabler Arena, and was headed back to their hotel when the bus began experiencing transmission problems. According to Bob Beretta, Army’s associate athletics director, the bus driver had just put on his emergency flashers and moved over to the right hand shoulder of the road. He was travelling at a slow rate of speed when the accident took place. A truck driven by 54 year old Alton D. Spight of Blue Mountain, Mississippi rammed into the back of the bus. The impact of the accident was violent and left the tractor-trailer driver trapped and several of the bus passengers shaken and bruised.

The team bus was carrying 27 passengers in addition to the driver, with riders including players, coaches and administrators. With many onboard complaining of back injuries and neck pain, the entire team was sent to local hospitals for evaluation of their injuries, with ambulances transporting three or four players at a time to a hospital, accompanied by either an administrator or a coach. Three local hospitals accommodated the team, but it is unknown as to whether anybody was kept overnight.  According to Beretta, most of the players were treated for their injuries and released. A spokeswoman from nearby St. Luke’s Hospital was quoted as having indicated that the injuries at their location were “just some bumps and bruises.”

Following the accident, the team planned to spend the night at the hotel that they were already booked into for their scheduled game and would be returning to West Point the following day. Though there are plans for their game against Lehigh University’s team was postponed, no make-up date has been scheduled yet. State police indicated that they would likely be citing Alton Spight in the accident, which shut down the northbound lanes of Route 33 for over an hour.

The driver of a school bus from the Lewiston-Altura school district was determined to be driving while intoxicated after having driven his bus into a ditch. At the time of the crash there were five children on the bus.

According to Winona County Sheriff Dave Brand, the driver was 54-year old Karl Allen Herber of Rollingstone, Minnesota and the accident took place at 4:44 p.m.. Herber was reportedly driving his vehicle at the end of the school day, taking children home, when his vehicle drifted across the center line of the road it was travelling on and crossed into oncoming traffic. It continued on into the ditch, where it came to a halt after striking several trees.

The children who were being transported on the bus were all under the age of sixteen. They were safely taken to their homes by other drivers, and none were reported to have suffered any injuries. Herber was also not injured, and was taken directly to the Winona County Jail. He posted bail after having been charged with multiple counts of third-degree drunken driving.

Officers on the scene indicated that when they arrived they detected a strong odor of alcohol and that the driver could not maintain his balance.

According to representatives from the Lewiston-Altura School District there is a strict no-alcohol, zero tolerance policy for those who are charged with driving their school buses. Their accepted blood alcohol limit is no higher than 0.0, though the general limit for drivers of any type of commercial vehicle is established at 0.04 percent According to the criminal complaint against him, at the time of the crash Herber’s blood alcohol level was established at 0.09 percent, which is not only well above the allowable limit for the school district and for commercial vehicles, but is also above the 0.08 legal limit set for drivers in the state.

Little information was available about Herber’s driving record with the school district, though court records indicate that he has no criminal offenses in his file and that he driving record is relatively clean but for having been issued a ticket in 2013 for failing to wear his seatbelt. The school district released no information regarding the children or how long the driver has worked for them, but did indicate that they are investigating.

A Greyhound bus heading from Los Angeles, California to Dallas, Texas narrowly averted disaster when a passenger attacked the bus driver and the bus ran off of the road in western Arizona. In addition to the driver, the bus was carrying 41 passengers, and of those onboard 24 suffered injuries.

According to state police, the crash took place in the early hours of Thursday, January 23^rd, and the incident began when a passenger onboard the bus attacked the driver According to passengers, the attacker was a young man who was apparently hallucinating and had expressed a desire to get off of the moving bus. When the bus driver refused to let him off, he began beating him.

As passengers jumped to pull the man off of the driver, the bus careened off of the highway and crossed into the median strip where it came to a stop before entering oncoming traffic. The bus did not overturn, and though 24 people sustained injuries and had to be taken to nearby hospitals, none of them were considered life threatening.

According to Harquahala Fire District Chief Dan Caudle, the bus driver “did a good job of maintaining control” of the vehicle, as the median strip is filled with rocks and bushes and could easily have flipped, causing many more injuries.

Those passengers who were not injured were picked up by a second Greyhound bus that took them to Phoenix, where they could continue on to their chosen destinations.  The injuries that were sustained by the 24 who were taken to the hospital included a broken sternum; some of the injuries were sustained during the struggle.

The passenger who was behind the ordeal was reportedly traveling with a female companion. When the bus crash took place both got off of the bus and ran away, but returned half an hour later, where the male, Maquel Donyel Morris, was arrested. The 25-year old native of Los Angeles was taken into custody, where he will likely be charged with endangerment, assault and aggravated assault.

Passengers on board the bus indicated that the ordeal was terrifying, but praised the bus driver and their fellow passengers for their quick-thinking actions.