UPDATE: (FRIDAY MORNING) FLETCHER LAUDS DRIVER
LAWRENCE CO. SCHOOLS SUPT. DR. ROB FLETCHER OFFERED THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT THIS MORNING CONCERNING THE BUS ACCIDENT THIS WEEK.
“…Yesterday evening, one of our bus drivers, Mr. Larry Whitt, made some quick decisions that helped keep our students out of harm’s way.
While driving his evening bus run, Mr. Whitt met a tractor trailer in a curve on Rt. 1690. Mr. Whitt pulled the bus to the side of the road, putting a tire in the ditch line, in order to avoid a major collision. The tractor trailer grazed the back end of the bus, but Mr. Whitt’s actions avoided a major collision, and more importantly, kept our students from being injured.
We are very thankful to Mr. Whitt, and to all our bus drivers, that take care of our kids on a daily basis. I also appreciate Personnel Director, Mr. Vernon Hall, and Transportation Director, Mr. Rick Blackburn as well as the law enforcement and emergency management personnel that took care of our students during the incident yesterday.”
All In,
Robbie L. Fletcher, EdD
Superintendent, Lawrence County Schools
EYEWITNESS REPORTS STATE THAT BUS WRECK CAME ‘VERY CLOSE’ TO BEING ‘MUCH WORSE’ AS NEAR HEAD-ON COLLISION WITH TRACTOR TRAILER AVOIDED BY LAST SECOND ACTION BY SCHOOL BUS DRIVER
FEBRUARY 16, 2017 – written by WADE QUEEN
For the second time in just over a week, there was a crash involving a school bus in Lawrence County.
According to the Lawrence County Emergency Management Agency, On Wednesday afternoon, February 15, just shortly after 4 P.M. Lawrence County E-911 received a call that a Lawrence County school bus and a tractor-trailer scraped back ends on state Route 1690, about one mile from the exit onto Route 645 not far from the Lawrence/Martin County border lines.
Lawrence County E-911 immediately dispatched the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department, Cherryville Fire Department, Netcare Ambulance, and the Lowmansville Fire Department. All these emergency agencies responded quickly to the crash scene.
Once all the emergency agencies arrived, they discovered that both the school bus and the tractor-trailer had collided their rear ends of both vehicles, receiving minor damages, and that after the scraping collision, the Lawrence County school bus ended up in a roadside ditch.
After EMS checked out everyone on the school bus and tractor trailer driver, it was determined no one was hurt in the wreck.
Parents of some of the students picked up their kids from the crash scene, and the rest of the children from the ditched bus were transferred to another school bus.
According to several of the students who were on the school bus, they stated to emergency officials and also to their parents that the tractor trailer came around the corner of the road at a high speed, and that the tractor trailer was on the bus’s side of the road.
The students all then said that had it not been for the extremely quick actions of the bus driver in the last second or two, the school would have definitely been hit in a head on collision with the tractor trailer, a fate that was avoided when the school bus driver swerved away from the oncoming big rig vehicle. No injuries occurred as well in what could have been a catastrophic tragedy for our local region was averted.
The other Lawrence school bus accident happened just last week on February 7. In that accident, a Lawrence County school bus also had a scraping collision with a vehicle, a SUV, just before 3:30 P.M., on Old Lick Creek Road, just below Lawrence County High School. In that accident, three people in the SUV and one student on the school bus received minor injuries, after initially emergency officials reported that were no injuries in that first accident. The February 7 bus wreck collision remains under investigation by the Louisa Police Department, and also the Lawrence County School Board.
The Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department is conducting the investigation into the latest February 15 bus crash, as well as the Lawrence County School Board is also.
