miércoles, 16 de octubre de 2013

Two people killed when SUV, school bus crash - KCTV Kansas City

JOHNSON COUNTY, MO (KCTV) -

It was a frightening scene for students on their ride home Tuesday. A violent crash killed two people and hurt dozens of kids.

Officials said the crash happened about 3:30 p.m. at 311 Northeast Highway 50, just outside of Warrensburg, MO. It happened directly south of the Skyhaven Airport.

The two people killed were 34-year-old Dustin R. Frisbee, of Knob Noster, MO, and 20-year-old Andrew L. Horning, of Leeton, MO.

The kids on the school bus are from Crest Ridge schools and, though none of them were seriously hurt, people can only imagine there will be some emotional healing to do.

As a tow truck hauled off the van where two people died, the physical impact of the collision became painfully clear and the emotional impact of being in the middle of that was top of mind when the school kids boarded a replacement bus.

"I had a school counselor and a school nurse that traveled with the children all the way home, and so they had school personnel with them all the way to the door they were taken to," said Dr. Julie Dill, the superintendent of the Crest Ridge School District.

The Missouri Highway Patrol said the bus was signaling and slowing down to turn right onto Northwest 271 Road off of Highway 50 when the van rear-ended the bus so hard that the van went under the bus, killing both driver and passenger.

A dozen of the 50 kids on the bus went to the hospital with just minor injuries.

"Bruises, bumps, shook up, stiff necks," Dill said.

"Historically buses are the safest vehicles on the roadways, for the size that they are, for the slow speeds that they travel, and that's what we want. They have high-backed compartments and high-backed seats and they are safer," said Sgt. Collin Stosberg with the Missouri Highway Patrol.

Every bus route from the school carries kids from kindergarten through 12th grade all together. But the specific route, route 8, will get special attention in the morning.

"I will be riding the bus in the morning to pick those kids back up and we're going to have counselors on the bus with us. We will have counselors at the school. We are a very real school so we pull together and we take care of our family," Dill said.

Because it is a small district, with only 632 kids, they only have two counselors on staff. So they will be borrowing additional counselors from other districts until they can gauge how the kids are doing.

Stosberg said the two men who were killed worked construction in Kansas City. They were heading home at the time of the accident.

Copyright 2013 KCTV (Meredith Corp.) All rights reserved.

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