‘Screaming’: Schoolgirl’s bus crash nightmare
An 11-year-old girl has described the horror moment her school bus was hit by a truck — an incident that left multiple children with life-changing injuries.
An 11-year-old girl has described the horror moment her school bus was hit by a truck — an incident that left multiple children with life-changing injuries.
Ella Borg, spoke to the Herald Sun, and described how some students were thrown across the bus, while others were left hanging from their seatbelts.
“I was on the bus going home, and the truck hit the back of the bus and it just flipped over,” she said. “Everyone was just screaming, my friends were in there, it was just really chaotic.”
Truck driver in court
Meanwhile, a Melbourne truck driver has appeared in court accused of dangerous driving charges after the horrific collision.
Jamie Gleeson, 49, appeared remotely in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday afternoon still wearing an orange high-vis shirt.
He kept his head down, and could be heard deeply sighing on several occasions.
Prosecutor Mr Kerwin told the court police would need a significant amount of time to prepare the case, requesting 16 weeks to account for the “large number of children involved” and size of the collision.
He said Mr Gleeson had been charged with four counts of dangerous driving causing serious injury and may face “additional charges” after investigations into the incident continue.
The court heard the man, from Melbourne’s outer west, had been a truck driver for 18-years and had just finished work driving clay from Bulla to Kensington when the crash occurred.
Reading the police summary, Mr Kerwin said Mr Gleeson told police he was on his “usual route home” at the time and driving about 70km per hour.
“Next thing I know the bus in front slowed,” he allegedly told police.
“I tried to take evasive action but I couldn’t.”
Mr Kerwin said Mr Gleeson recounted seeing “sun flickers” from through trees which he knew could distort his vision.
He allegedly told police he would usually react by slowing down, but on this occasion he didn’t.
According to the summary, Mr Gleeson stopped at the scene, called triple-0 and began helping pull children from the records.
There was no allegation Mr Gleeson was affected by drugs or alcohol.
His lawyer, Ms Edwards, successfully applied for his bail saying there was “no allegation he tried to abscond or minimise his involvement”.
Police looking at ‘inattention’
“Inattention is something that we are actively looking at as part of the investigation,” Victoria Police Superintendent Michael Cruse told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.
“It is important to remind the community about the messaging that we continue to provide around road safety — that is we want all road users to remain vigilant and concentrate, obey the speed limit, be really courteous to other road users, and stay completely in attention at all times, not use a mobile phone.”
He said it was too early to tell if mobile phone use, excessive speed, drugs or alcohol were a factor in the crash, adding that there were likely to be more charges as the investigation continued.
“Eighteen children were taken to hospital, seven with serious injuries,” Victoria Police said in a statement. “The bus driver, a 52-year-old Melton West man, was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.”
Supt Cruse said many of the people who responded to the “confronting” scene would have known the students involved.
“The bus driver, despite being injured, I understand that he helped some of the children out of the bus,” Mr Cruse told a press conference.
“Then we had passers-by who have heroically stopped immediately and assisted in assisting the children who could be removed from the bus.
“It was chaotic. It would have been very confronting for those passersby.”
Major Collision Investigation Unit Senior Sergeant Paul Lineham told 3AW it appeared the bus driver had seen the truck approaching from behind and tried to accelerate to get out of its path.
“That may have lessened the actual impact of the truck itself,” he said. “We don’t use the term ‘lucky’ because obviously, there’s an incredibly unfortunate set of circumstances, but this had the potential to have multiple fatalities.”
It comes after Royal Children’s Hospital chief executive Bernadette McDonald gave a grim update to the media on Wednesday morning, outlining the severity of the injuries.
“We have a number of children with partial, one child has had a complete amputation,” she said.
Ms McDonald said one child was still in ICU but was “likely to come out later”.
“We received nine patients yesterday,” she said.
“Two of them, fortunately, were discharged from the emergency department with minor injuries. We admitted seven patients. One of those patients is in our intensive care unit at the moment. The ages of the children range from five to 11 years.
“The children have suffered multiple and traumatic injuries, including partial and complete amputations of arms, multiple crush limb injuries, severe lacerations to head and body injuries, glass shard injuries and three patients are currently receiving spinal support and being monitored, carefully, in terms of spinal injuries.
“We still have two patients to go into theatre. The theatre teams did operate until the early hours of the morning, and we still have more theatre to go today. Some of these patients will require returns to theatres and multiple surgeries in the coming days and the coming weeks.
“When we became aware of the nature of the injuries, we called in specialist plastic surgery and vascular surgery support from the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
“We want to say a big thank you to the Royal Melbourne team for bringing us those surgeons so quickly to support the surgeries overnight. I also want to acknowledge the work of the ambulance paramedics who were on the scene very, very quickly and who transported those seriously ill children to us very, very quickly yesterday afternoon and into the evening.
“So, our teams, I want to acknowledge, responded beautifully last night, in these sorts of situations. Our trauma team takes precedence and coordinates care. Our emergency department, our theatre teams and our trauma team did beautifully as well as every staff member in the hospital.
“I couldn’t get people to go home last night. They were all wanting to stay and actually help in any way possible. It was very calm and very well controlled, and very well responded to last night. So I want to acknowledge how proud I am of the team that work at the Royal Children’s Hospital and the magnificent care they provide in these sorts of situations.”
Ms McDonald said she was “very surprised” that there were no fatalities.
“I would never say we’re lucky,” she said.
“This is traumatic for every single person involved, the families, we have some very traumatised families and children in our hospital at the moment and we’re working extremely hard to provide that trauma support and care that they will need not just now in the coming weeks and months as well.”
The children were seriously injured when their school bus flipped onto its side after a crash with a truck, trapping several of the passengers.
A senior police office said it was “very lucky” none of the nearly 50 primary school children on board had been killed.
“The scene is obviously a really significant scene, the bus has suffered significant damage and it’s also overturned,” Superintendent Cruse said on Tuesday.
“So it’s very fortunate that the incident isn’t more serious, but I must stress it’s still a very serious incident.”
Emergency services rushed to the scene at the corner of Exford and Murphys Rd in Eynesbury on Melbourne’s western fringe at about 3.40pm on Tuesday.
The accident happened close to Exford Primary School.
There were chaotic scenes as dozens of CFA, SES, paramedic and police personnel worked desperately to free the children from the bus, while bystanders, parents and teachers from the local school comforted others.
Ambulance Victoria initially said 10 children had been taken to hospital, along with an adult and three other children in a stable condition.
Photos from the scene showed dozens of emergency workers freeing those trapped on board through an emergency exit.
Superintendent Cruse said 46 people, including the bus driver, had been in the bus.
He said police believe the bus was trying to turn right into Murphys Rd before the truck collided with its rear wheel.
A number of children were helped out of the bus by good Samaritans before emergency services arrived on the scene.
One mother spoke about the horror of having her child involved.
“We raced down here, there was tears and emotion, [my daughter] was frightened, she has scratches, blood on her hands,” Nicole Kirk told Nine News.
“She was more concerned about her friends. She had her seatbelt on and she was fine. We are one of the lucky ones.”
Superintendent Cruse said the incident could have been a lot worse.
“It’s very lucky,” he said.
— with NCA NewsWire
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