About 20 kids on a school bus making its way through the Society Hill development in Tinton Falls got a scare yesterday when the driver of the slow-moving vehicle passed out.
The bus jumped a curb and struck a fire hydrant before the driver, whose name wasn’t released, put the vehicle in reverse and stopped it, according to one account.
No children were injured, but the driver was hospitalized, said Tamar Sydney-Gens, business administrator for the borough school district. His condition was not immediately known.
The bus was carrying K thru 3 students at the Mahala F. Atchison Elementary School.
Carrie DeVincens, who lives in the development, said she was at home when a neighbor ran into her house telling her to call the police and report an accident. She then went outside and, unable to pry open the bus door, got the kids to open an emergency window. Other neighbors hoisted her into the bus through the window, she said.
“Two or three kids were crying,” but the rest appeared calm, she said.
The driver, she said, “was just kind of slumped over” at the wheel and in and out of consciousness.
Police and other emergency personnel arrived on the scene, and as the driver was being put into an ambulance, “he waved to the kids,” DeVincens said.
“I think some of the kids are still a little freaked,” she said last night.
redbankgreen put in a call to the police department but hasn’t heard back yet.
Sydney-Gens said the schools have a bus emergency response plan in effect and that it was followed yesterday. But the incident itself “was beyond our control,” she said.
