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Want to know what happened to those students and the driver on the
first day of school from the August 26, 2003 story? Read below.
August 27, 2003
Principal rides bus to reassure students who
witnessed crash
By Emily Richmond
<emily@vegas.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
Anne Grisham, principal of Clark County's newest
magnet elementary school, knew some of her students may have been
nervous Tuesday while making their way home along the same route they
had been on when their school bus crashed into a motorcycle the day
before.
So when the dismissal bell rang at 3:05 p.m.,
Grisham, principal of the Sandy Miller Elementary Academy for
International Studies on Lake Mead Boulevard, boarded Clark County
School District Bus No. 938 to share the journey.
"I wanted them to know they were safe and that we
were there to support them," Grisham said this morning. "We had a nice
time. The kids asked if I would go with them at least once a week, and
I told them I'd be riding along from time to time."
Even though Monday was just the first day of the new
school year, Grisham already knew many of her students from her years
as principal at nearby Fay Herron Elementary School. The bus was
headed to Herron, one of the relay sites for parents to drop off and
pick up students in the magnet program, when the accident occurred.
While there have been calls and visits from parents
to the school about the accident, the majority have been offers of
support, Grisham said.
"Parents have been coming by to say they understand
and ask how they can help," Grisham said. "We've had outstanding
support from the community and from the district."
The rookie bus driver, Marvin Mosely, 22, was
ferrying 45 students when he drove into the path of an oncoming
motorcycle, police said. The motorcyclist, identified Tuesday as
48-year-old Sidney Ellis McIntire, was thrown from his Harley-Davidson
and pronounced dead at the scene.
The cause of the accident is under investigation
although preliminary reports suggest Mosely failed to yield the right
of way, police said. Mosely has been taken off the job pending the
outcome of the investigation, school district officials said.
Vanessa Morales, 8, was seated directly behind the
driver on Monday when the bus collided with the oncoming motorcyclist,
her mother, Adela Gonzalez, said.
"She was nervous and crying," Adela Gonzalez said,
when she picked up Vanessa up at Herron.
Vanessa's 7-year-old brother, Richard, handled the
accident a little better, Gonzalez said. She attributed that to his
young age.
Gonzalez said she and her children talked about what
they saw. They asked her to drive them to school Tuesday.
"They were afraid to ride the bus," she said.
But after some coaxing from their mother, the
children boarded the bus -- with a new driver.
"She was a good bus driver," Richard said. "She
didn't crash like the bad bus driver."
The school district requires drivers to be at least
21 years old and complete 47 hours of behind-the-wheel training in
addition to 40 hours of classroom training. State law requires just 10
hours each of classroom and behind-the-wheel training.
"We've been doing four times what the state said we
had to do," said Sherrie Morton, a driving instructor in the school
district's transportation department. "Safety has always been our
primary priority."
The average school bus driver in the district is
about 40 years old and often retired from another job, such as the
military or law enforcement, Morton said. The district has nearly
1,000 drivers transporting about 120,000 students each school day.
Morton declined to discuss Mosely except to say he
had completed the district's training requirements before heading out
for his first day behind the wheel Monday.
The school district has 1,180 buses traveling 987
routes, carrying more than 120,000 students each day, district
officials said. District buses drove 50.3 million miles last year,
school district officials said.
There were 261 accidents during the 2002-03 school
year involving district buses, with 117 a result of driver error,
Officer Jose Montoya, spokesman for Metro Police, said.
Of those 261 accidents only 27 resulted in injuries
reported at the scene, said Kimberly Harris, claims specialist for the
district's risk management department. In the past 10 years there have
been four incidents involving school buses that resulted in
fatalities. Only one of those deaths was a student -- a boy running
across a six-lane road was struck by a school bus in 1997, Harris
said.
The Clark County School District's transportation
safety record has typically been one of the best of the nation's
larger metropolitan school districts, said state Sen. Dennis Nolan,
R-Las Vegas, who has worked as a transportation safety and loss
prevention consultant.
Nolan, vice chairman of the Senate Transportation
Committee, said he reviewed the district's safety record during the
last legislative session while considering a bill seeking to increase
the training requirements for school bus drivers. The bill did not
pass out of the Legislature.
"I know the district has put a heavy emphasis on
training and continuing education for their drivers," Nolan said.
"Their safety record has always been above the standard."
Taken from:
Las Vegas Sun
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