WINTER HAVEN, Fla. — A school bus carrying dozens of high school students flipped onto its roof in a chain-reaction crash in central Florida early Monday, killing a 10th-grade girl and the driver of another vehicle.
The bus was headed to Winter Haven High School shortly after 6 a.m. when an oncoming white Chevrolet Malibu crossed the center line on Lucerne Park Road and struck the bus near its rear wheels, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said at a news conference, according to the Associated Press and Spectrum News 13. The impact tore a tire off the bus and sent it head-on into an oncoming Jeep, which caught fire. The bus came to rest upside down in a ditch.
“It was a terrible, tragic morning. We had a beautiful 10th grade girl lose her life,” Judd said. “I think this is the most horrific bus tragedy we’ve had in decades, as far back as I can remember.”
39 people aboard
The bus was carrying 39 people: 37 high school students, the driver and the driver’s daughter, the sheriff said. The person driving the Jeep was also killed. Officials have not publicly identified either victim.
Seven students were taken to hospitals by ambulance and three were airlifted, while four more were taken by family members, Spectrum News reported. Most of the survivors were treated and released, but one person remained in critical condition, according to the latest reports. First responders spent the first several hours getting the injured to hospitals, identifying students and reuniting them with their parents.
‘For unknown reasons, drifted’
Investigators, including the National Transportation Safety Board, are trying to determine why the Malibu left its lane. “What we see on the video is clearly this white car, for unknown reasons, drifted,” Judd said, describing a chain reaction that began when the car clipped the bus. Authorities said they planned to release more information at a news conference Tuesday at the sheriff’s operations center in Winter Haven.
Polk County Public Schools Superintendent Frederick Heid said students regularly practice drills on how to get off a bus after an accident. Standing in front of the overturned bus, he said, “This event could have been far worse.”
School board Chairman Justin Sharpless asked the community to rally around the girl’s family, her school and its staff. “There are really no words that can take away the pain of losing a young person,” he said.
Second Polk bus crash in weeks
The crash came about a month after another Polk County school bus was involved in a collision in Lakeland on Sept. 3. No students were aboard that bus, and one person suffered injuries that were not life-threatening, according to the AP.
School buses remain among the safest ways for children to get to school, but crashes involving other vehicles can still be deadly, especially for people in the smaller vehicles. The NTSB typically issues a preliminary report within weeks, with a final report and any safety recommendations taking a year or more.
Photo: Benoît Prieur via Wikimedia Commons (CC0). A Florida school bus on Florida’s Turnpike, January 2022; not the bus involved in Monday’s crash.
Sources: Associated Press (via CBS Miami); Spectrum News 13.
This article was produced with AI assistance and is based on reporting from Associated Press (via CBS Miami) and Spectrum News 13.