A total of four people went to the hospital after a car struck a school bus in Belfast on Thursday morning, including the driver and passenger in the car and two students who had been riding the bus.
The crash occurred just after 8 a.m., when a 2016 Kia Sorento driven by Steven Young, 68, of Lincolnville got into a head-on collision with the bus, which was driving on Lincolnville Avenue and taking students to Captain Albert Stevens Elementary School in Belfast, according to Belfast Police Chief Robert Cormier. The bus was driven by Michael Murray, 26, of Belfast.
Young and a child passenger in his vehicle were both taken to MaineHealth Waldo Hospital with injuries. Young’s injuries were not critical, police said earlier in the day. After an initial investigation, Cormier said that Young’s vehicle “may have crossed the center line” before the crash.
There were 22 students riding on the school bus, according to RSU 71 Interim Superintendent Robert England. Emergency medical workers evaluated all of them and referred two of them to the hospital for further attention.
“That’s a phone call no parent wants to get,” said David Dyer, who is the father of both of those kids and learned of the crash at around 9 a.m., while working on a vehicle at Gibbs Auto & Muffler in Belfast.
Dyer’s 9-year-old son, Frank, was taken to the hospital by ambulance and treated for whiplash and stomach pain, Dyer said. His daughter, 8-year-old Fay, was brought to the hospital by her mother for knee pain and whiplash.
Both kids were out of the hospital by early afternoon. In describing the crash to Dyer, they recalled seeing the hood of the bus come up into the windshield.
“They got pushed into the seats,” Dyer said. “Which makes me wish they had seatbelts. They’re required for everything else. Why not buses?”
Dyer commended the school’s handling of the crash, although he noted the initial text message communications to families about it had been “vague” and lacking in detail.
“It didn’t say what bus, or anything like that. All we heard was [that] it was a bus,” Dyer said.
Both of the vehicles involved in the crash were disabled, with police saying the school bus was totaled. It took extensive front-end damage.
After the crash, the bus could be seen in the area of 250 Lincolnville Ave., which is also known as Route 52. That’s just north of the Irving gas station at the intersection with Back Belmont Road.
That section of Route 52 was closed for a few hours after the crash.
England said that school staff will provide additional support to students who were involved in the crash.
