TWO STUDENTS ARE KILLED AFTER SCHOOL BUS PLUNGES OFF LOOP 610 IN HOUSTON
Every year Houston sees numerous school bus accidents but most of them are fender benders with no injuries to students.
Tragically, this was not the case on Tuesday when a school bus crashed off a highway after an accident with a car, killing two students and seriously injuring two others and the driver.
Video from KTRK-TV showed the bus lying on its side with its front end smashed in, underneath an overpass for Interstate 610’s South Loop in southeast Houston.
KRTK reported that the bus had originally been on the 610 but fell from the overpass above. The guardrail on the highway sustained heavy damage, the TV station reported.
The school bus was heading to Houston’s Furr High School, which also houses REACH Charter High School, when the crash occurred at about 7 a.m., the Houston Independent School District stated. One of the victims was a 17-year-old girl who attended Furr High School. She was killed at the accident scene. The other was a 14-year-old girl who attended REACH. State data indicated this was the first death of a student in a public school bus accident in Texas since 2008.
The other occupants of the bus – two students and the driver – were seriously injured and taken to local hospitals, according to information from the school district. The bus driver, later identified as Luisa Pacheco, was taken to Ben Taub Hospital. Officials said she was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
One witness, Anthony Martin, who was driving on the road below the highway told KTRK he saw the bus crash off the freeway “nose down at more than 50 miles an hour.”
“It sounded like somebody just hit a brick wall,” he told the media.
Investigators are still trying to work out what caused this terrible accident. The Houston Chronicle reported the comments of Victor Senties, a Houston Police Department spokesman who indicated the driver of a Buick LaSabre had told investigators she thought another vehicle near her was drifting into her lane. She veered away from the perceived threat and struck the side of the bus. The bus driver then “apparently over-corrected and the bus careened from the overpass,” according to Senties.
Our thoughts are with the families of those who died in this crash and those who were injured. If your child has been hurt in a school bus accident, you may have grounds to file a personal injury lawsuit against a school district or another driver’s insurance policy.
Although serious school bus accidents are rare, there have been some devastating crashes in Texas which saw one of the worst incidents in the history of US school bus crashes. In 1989 in Alton, 21 students died and dozens more were injured when their fully loaded school bus plunged into a water-filled gravel pit after it was hit by a truck carrying soft drinks.
The bus was en route to nearby Mission junior and senior high schools. It had just picked up two more students when it was hit by the truck. Many of the students were standing in the aisles of the bus.
The bus went flying into the unbarricaded gravel pit just beside the road, plunged 40 feet to the water, flipped upside down and came to rest on its side. It then sank and was completely under water.
For each child killed, the families received an estimated $4.5 million from Valley Coca-Cola Bottling Co., which owned the truck that caused the crash when it ran a stop sign and knocked the school bus into the pit on Sept. 21, 1989, reported the Los Angeles Times.
They received nearly $1 million more for each death from the bus manufacturer to settle lawsuits alleging the bus had insufficient escape hatches.
Our Houston personal injury lawyers help people who have been hurt in truck and bus accidents and the families of those who have lost loved ones.
