One child and one teacher killed in ‘horrific’ collision that ripped apart school bus in New Jersey
Paramus Public Schools said the bus was taking pupils from East Brook Middle School to New Jersey historic site Waterloo Village, which is about five miles from the crash scene
A teacher and a pupil were killed when their school bus was ripped apart in a collision with a dump truck on a New Jersey highway on Thursday, officials said.
The crash left the bus lying on its side on the guardrail of Interstate 80 in Mount Olive, its undercarriage and front end sheared off and its steering wheel exposed. The children had been travelling to a local historic site.
“I heard a scraping sound and we toppled over the highway,” said pupil Theo Ancevski, 11, who was sitting in the fourth row of the bus and was treated at a hospital for cuts and scrapes. “A lot of people were screaming and hanging from their seat belts.”
Some of the victims crawled out of the emergency exit in the back of the bus and an escape hatch on the roof. More than 40 people were taken to area hospitals.
A red dump truck with a mangled front end was parked along the highway nearby, about 50 miles (80 kilometres) west of New York. The truck was registered to Mendez Trucking, of Belleville.