A high school student and one other person were killed in a crash that caused a school bus to flip over on to its roof in central Florida early on Monday, according to authorities.
About ۲۶ students traveling on the public school bus involved in the crash were taken to the hospital, the Polk county sheriff’s office said in a statement posted to Facebook. The bus had ۳۹ occupants: ۳۷ high school students, the bus driver and the driver’s daughter, officials said.
The crash unfolded at about ۶.۱۳am local time in the community of Winter Haven and involved three vehicles, according to authorities.
The high schooler killed in the wreck was described as being a teenage girl in ۱۰th grade. The second person killed in the crash was “an occupant from one of the [two] other vehicles” involved, authorities said.
A spokesperson for the Polk county public school district said the late ۱۰th grader had been a student at Winter Haven high school (WHHS).
“This is devastating news for WHHS and our community,” said a district statement, according to the local news outlet WESH. “We are praying for the victims and their families.”
Officials said at a news conference that the bus was traveling properly in its lane when a white Chevy Malibu going in the opposite direction careened across the roadway’s centerline “for unknown reasons” and smashed into the school bus.
The car hit the bus’s tandem rear wheels, making it lose traction while evidently ripping one of its tires off. The bus then crossed the center line into oncoming traffic itself and struck a silver Jeep head-on, officials said.
“It was a horrible crash,” Grady Judd, Polk county’s sheriff, said. “It was a terrible, tragic morning. We had a beautiful ۱۰th grade girl lose her life.”
The most recent data from the National Safety Council showed that there were ۱۱۰ deaths related to school bus crashes in ۲۰۲۴ – a ۱۴% decrease from ۱۲۸ deaths in ۲۰۲۳.
According to that data, in a nine-year period beginning in ۲۰۱۵, about ۷۱% of school bus-related crash deaths involved occupants of other vehicles and ۱۵% of those fatalities involved pedestrians.
Passengers accounted for ۶% of deaths reported in school bus crashes, suggesting such fatalities were relatively rare, according to that data. Drivers and cyclists accounted for ۴% and ۳% of death reported in school bus crashes, according to the council, which asserted that riding school buses statistically was safer for children than riding in a car or walking to class.
