A 42-year-old church bus driver in Uvalde, Texas, sent at least 15 passengers to the hospital when the vehicle he was driving rolled to its right side due to uncontrolled speed approaching a dangerous curve in east Harris County.
ABC13 bared in a report that the bus crash happened close to an apartment complex at 90 Uvalde Rd. on Sunday at around 12:26 p.m.
Details of the Accident
According to the news outlet, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzales said their deputies arrived at a "very chaotic" scene involving a bus crash with at least 25 people onboard, many of them children.
"When our units arrived, they had to mobilize very quickly because children were kind of partially out of the bus and in different places. So it was very chaotic. Initially, they were able to stabilize the situation. One adult person, possibly a female, is in critical condition, we are told. The rest are expected to survive their injuries," Khou 11 said in a report.
Gonzales added that their officers had to act quickly since some of the survivors almost got thrown out of the vehicle while the others were scattered in various areas close to the bus.
"14 out of the 15 were transported to hospitals with possible but non-life-threatening injuries. The 15th passenger (33) was stable," Sheriff Gonzales wrote on his Twitter account.
ABC13 said the church bus belongs to Mount Zion Baptist Church in Uvalde. One of the passengers, Austin, recounted some details immediately after their bus flipped over to its side.
"There were screams because there was a lot of blood. One girl's arm was through the window under the bus, and they had to lift the bus up to get her out," 15-year-old Austin told the news outlet.
Church's Reaction Following the Crash
Pastor Jared Zapata of Mount Zion Baptist Church told ABC13 that their church only employs volunteer drivers, including the one assigned to the ill-fated bus.
Zapata bared that their drivers take their members to and from the church during services. He added that they have decided to ban the involved driver from rendering volunteer service to church because of the crash.
The news outlet said that authorities from the Harris County Sheriff's Office mentioned in their initial report that the driver lost control of the bus due to speeding. The vehicle reportedly rolled to the right as it turned on a curve close to the apartment complex.
While investigators said the driver was sober at the time of the crash, some parents expressed their wish to have the driver accountable for the incident.
"There were a lot of young children, that is your priority. If you are driving a bus full of children, that's your priority," Daniel Barley, one of the parents, told the news outlet.
ABC13 said Harris County authorities are continuing their investigation into the accident.
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