SCHOOL BUS COLLIDES WITH DUMP TRUCK, KILLING TWO
MOUNT OLIVE, N.J. A school bus taking children to a field trip at a New Jersey historic site collided with a dump truck Thursday, ripping it apart and killing a teacher and student.
The school bus was on the median of Interstate 80 in Mount Olive and the front end appeared to be crushed. It was also sheared off its undercarriage and a piece of the front end of the bus with the steering wheel visible was lying on top of the guardrail separating the highway from the median.
“I heard a scraping sound and we toppled over the highway,” said student Theo Ancevski, who was treated for some cuts. “A lot of people were screaming and hanging from their seatbelts.”
A red dump truck with a mangled front end was parked nearby, about 80 kilometres west of New York. Paramus Public Schools said that the bus was taking students from East Brook Middle School to Waterloo Village, about eight kilometres from the crash scene.
Police didn’t release details of how the crash happened, but the trucking company had a string of crashes in recent years and a higher than average rate of violations that sidelined its vehicles, according to federal safety data.
There were 45 people, including 38 students, on the bus. Forty-three from the bus and the truck driver were taken to hospital, some in critical condition.