2 dead in crash involving school bus in Bastrop

A child and an adult were killed when a concrete truck struck a Hays Consolidated Independent School District school bus Friday afternoon in Bastrop County.

The bus was carrying 44 preschoolers from a Buda elementary school and 11 adults when it was hit by the truck, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

DPS Sgt. Deon Cockrell said two people were killed: a child on the bus and a man who was in a Dodge Charger behind the bus. Their names were not released.

The bus was heading west on Texas 21 near Caldwell Road when the concrete truck, which was traveling in the opposite direction, veered and rammed into the bus, Cockrell said. The Charger struck either the bus or the truck, he said. The bus was knocked on its side.

The bus was carrying students from Tom Green Elementary School and 11 adults returning from a field trip to the Bastrop Zoo when it was “involved in a serious accident,” Hays Consolidated Independent School District said in a statement. The school is in Buda, about 15 miles south of downtown Austin.

Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services evaluated 53 patients, Division Chief Kevin Parker said. Four were transported by helicopters in critical condition, and six more were taken to hospitals with “potentially serious

injuries.”

Some with minor injuries also were taken to area hospitals, while others

were uninjured and were taken to a reunification site established by the school district, Parker said. He

said Austin-Travis County EMS used its AmBus, an ambulance that can carry multiple patients, to transport about 10 patients with minor injuries to a children’s hospital.

Cockrell said he did not have information on the condition of the truck driver.

The school bus did not have seat belts, district spokesman Tim Savoy said. All Hays CISD buses purchased after 2017 have seat belts, in compliance with a state law passed that year, but the bus involved in the accident was a 2011 model, he said.

District staff, counselors and administrators “all joined first responders either at the accident scene or at the reunification location,” Hays CISD said. The reunification process was completed just before 7 p.m., Superintendent Eric Wright said in a statement Friday night.

Jay Janner/Associated Press Children are transported after a fatal school bus crash on Texas 21 on Friday in Bastrop. Authorities say a school bus collided with a concrete truck.