Bus wreck injures students

Dozens are hurt in Johnston crash

SELMA -- About three dozen students and a bus driver were treated at area hospitals for injuries suffered when one school bus rear-ended another Wednesday afternoon.

One parent also was treated at Johnston Memorial Hospital after having a panic attack, Johnston County Schools officials said.

The accident happened at 3:50 p.m. on N.C. 96 near Selma Elementary School. Trooper D.J. Hare of the state Highway Patrol said the driver of bus No. 209 stopped behind another school bus, which was stopped in the road with its hazard lights on. The driver of Bus No. 158 didn't see the two stopped buses in time, Hare said, and slammed into the back of bus No. 209.

Johnston County Schools spokeswoman Crystal Roberts said the buses were carrying 65 students from Selma Elementary and Selma Middle schools. Sixteen Selma Elementary and seven Selma Middle School students were taken to Johnston Memorial with minor injuries. One student from each school was taken to the WakeMed Raleigh Campus, Roberts said, in accord with emergency preferences provided to the schools by their parents.

The driver of bus No. 209, which was carrying the Selma Elementary students, was treated at Johnston Memorial. The driver of bus No. 158, carrying Selma Middle School students, did not suffer any injuries.

No students were expected to be admitted at either hospital, Roberts said Wednesday evening.

"It could have been a lot worse," she said. "The most important thing was accounting for every one of these kids on these buses."

The uninjured students were transported to Selma Elementary School, where their parents were allowed to pick them up.

The waiting rooms at both hospitals were crowded with relatives while the students were being treated.

Santiago Hernandez, 14, an eighth-grader at Selma Middle School, said the students on his bus watched as the bus in front of them, filled with Selma Elementary School students, slammed on its brakes to avoid hitting the stalled bus. That bus was able to stop in time, but their bus was not.

"We went right into them," he said. "It felt really bad. One girl [on my bus] went up from her seat to the front of the bus near the bus driver."

Roberts said Wednesday night that the drivers of the buses involved in the collision would be subjected to drug testing to determine whether drugs played a part in the accident.

"We don't expect that to be the case," she said, "but the tests are policy."

(Staff writer Marti Maguire contributed to this report.)