Dump truck slams into school bus; several hurt
(NECN: Josh Brogadir) – A dump truck and school bus crash head on. A lot of school children have bumps and bruises, but there are no serious injuries. The truck driver told police his brakes gave out, so he tried to swerve around a line of stopped cars when he slammed into the bus. “Very lucky. It was a good thing the bus was stopped, obviously,” said Wrentham Police Lt. Bill McGrath. Lucky there were no serious injuries in a head-on crash in Wrentham, Massachusetts. A dump truck driver slammed into a school bus packed with dozens of students that was stopped at a busy intersection about 2:30pm Tuesday. Asphalt in the truck bed went flying onto the bus and out onto the road. “He said his brakes failed. He didn’t want to rear end the cars that were waiting in line, went around them. Unfortunately for him, there was a school bus. And on top of that, there were kids off-loading, so he struck the school bus head-on,” Lt. McGrath said. Bob Perry owns the auto repair shop at the intersection of Arnold Street and West Street called Bob’s Sheldonville Auto Repair. Afraid the truck would catch fire, he pried the driver’s door open to get him out, then did his own test of the truck’s brakes at the scene. “He was semi-conscious. And he said to me, my brakes failed. And upon checking, his brakes were to the floor,” Perry said. A few of the students cut their lips and had bumps and bruises. Thirteen year old Jackson Hickey had just gotten off at his bus stop, was walking up the street when he heard the crash, turned around and called 911. He’s still shaken up. “For some reason, I walked a little bit faster than I normally do. So, I could have probably been within five feet of the crash. It was scary,” Hickey said. Perry calls West Street and Arnold Street a dangerous intersection around a blind corner. He says he seen several crashes here before, but never one involving a school bus. “This is a bad intersection. First, school buses park here, stop here to let kids off. Why they do that, I have no idea. It’s a dangerous intersection, they should pull up further,” Perry added. A state police truck team will take a look at the badly damaged truck and inspect its brakes, to try to verify the driver’s explanation of what happened. The students were middle school and high school kids from the King Phillip Regional District. The truck driver was taken to Caritas Norwood Hospital with lacerations to his face. After the investigation, Wrentham police will determine whether to issue a ticket to the driver.
