Investigators probe cause of bus crash that killed 2

Investigators combed through evidence Friday seeking answers to why a school bus carrying 45 fifth-graders and teachers on a field trip collided with a dump truck on a New Jersey highway, killing a student and teacher and injuring dozens of others.

Police declined to release details about how the crash happened, but it occurred on a stretch of highway just past the exit for Waterloo Village, where the group from East Brook Middle School in Paramus was headed. The bus wound up on a guardrail close to a spot for emergency vehicles to make a U-Turn on the highway. A sign there reads “No Turns.”

Officials said Friday that most of the 43 injured people from the bus were discharged from hospitals, but they declined to provide details about the types and severity of the injuries they suffered. Officials also didn’t detail what injuries the truck driver suffered.

The husband of teacher Jennifer Williamson-Kennedy said in a statement to News 12 New Jersey that he was “in shock, devastated and totally crushed” by her death.

Kevin Kennedy said “my beautiful bride and I have been in total love every day of our lives since the day our eyes met on May 5th, 1994.”

Williamson-Kennedy was a social studies teacher at and had taught for about two decades, according to state payroll records.

Schools were open Friday, with crisis counselors on hand to help students and staff. But evening activities were canceled, and standardized testing was canceled for Friday and next Monday.

The bus was one of three taking students from the school, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) west of New York City, to Waterloo Village, a historic site depicting a Lenape Indian community and once-thriving port about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the crash scene. The other buses made it to the site but returned to the school about 50 miles (80 kilometers) away.

The crash left the bus lying on its side on the guardrail of Interstate 80 in Mount Olive, its undercarriage and front end sheared off and its steering wheel exposed. Some of the victims crawled out of the emergency exit in the back and an escape hatch on the roof.