Students left shaken after bus rollover
‘Minor bumps and bruises’
A group of Hub middle school students escaped serious injury yesterday when the bus they were riding home in from a Sudbury charter school rolled over on Interstate 95, tossing the unbuckled children around inside.
“They are very lucky,” said Dr. Ilan Schwartz, chief of pediatric emergency medicine at NewtonWellesley Hospital, where 10 of the 22 children on board were treated.
“They were not restrained and some flew from one side of the bus to the other. Most of the injuries we are seeing are bruises from falling from one side to the other.”
Schwartz said the seven girls and three boys, ages 12 to 14, were nervous and shaken when they arrived after the crash.
The bus came to rest leaning against a rock wall off the right lane on the southbound side of the highway just south of the interchange between I-95 and Route 20 in Weston.
The right side of the bus was damaged as it leaned against the wall on a 45-degree angle with the driver’s side wheels in the air.
Weston fire Chief David Soar said all of the students, as well as the bus driver and the bus monitor, were able to free themselves by the time first responders arrived, and none was seriously injured.
Neither the driver of the bus nor a pickup truck driver involved in the accident was transported to a hospital.
“We knew at least 10 were injured, the rest were shaken and had minor bumps and bruises, but no serious injuries,” Soar said. “They were very fortunate.”
The pickup truck involved in the incident sustained damage to the right side of the body and the rear bumper.
The cause of the crash is under investigation by state police.
The bus was removed from the ditch hours later, but there was still a five-mile backup on I-95 southbound and one lane blocked off into the start of the evening commute.