school bus

Tag Archives: school bus

Buckshot from hunters hits school bus driver near Homer Glen

Oct 15, 2015 | WLSAM Staff

(HOMER GLEN) A school bus driver was hit in the cheek by buckshot fired by dove hunters last week near southwest suburban Homer Glen, but none of the students on the bus were injured.

The Lockport High School bus was northbound on Parker Road, north of 159th Street, about 3:40 p.m. when the driver heard a gunshot and felt something strike his left cheek, according to a report from the Will County sheriff’s office.

The driver pulled over and called 911, saying he had been shot in the cheek. Sheriff’s police and a Homer Township Fire Protection District ambulance responded, but the 59-year-old driver refused medical attention for an abrasion on his cheek, according to the report.

Lockport High School administrative staff also responded and called the parents of the 11 students on the bus, all between 14 and 18, police said. None of the students were injured and they went home with their parents.

“Officers found a single shotgun pellet inside the bus,” Illinois Department of Natural Resource spokesman Chris Young said. “The driver was examined, but refused additional treatment. The injury appeared to be minor.”

Young said the incident is still being investigated and he did not know if any tickets had been issued.

The hunters were on private land, he said, and dove season (Sept. 1-Nov. 14; Dec. 26- Jan. 9) is currently open.

However, hunters are not allowed to shoot across a road, and cannot hunt in a roadway ditch, median or right-of-way, Young said.

Nine hunting-related injuries were reported in Illinois in 2014, with six resulting in only minor injuries, according to IDNR. The only fatal incident was the result of a self-inflicted wound, when a bow hunter shot himself while trying to remove a pistol from a harness underneath layers of insulated clothing.

North suburban animal shelter files lawsuit against bus company after crash

May 7, 2015 | WLS-AM Staff

(CHICAGO) A north suburban animal shelter has filed a lawsuit against a bus company whose driver crashed a school bus through the front wall of the shelter in October 2013.

Wright-Way Rescue filed the suit Wednesday in Cook County Circuit Court against Alltown Bus Service Inc., and driver Janice O’Leary.

The crash happened just before 1 p.m. on Oct. 2, 2013. The bus was southbound on Harem Avenue making a left turn onto eastbound Touhy Avenue at the Niles-Chicago border when the driver told police she lost control, Niles police said at the time.

The bus jumped a curb on the north side of Touhy and crashed into Wright-Way. No one inside the building, human or animal, was injured. O’Leary was ticketed for failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident, authorities said.

According to the lawsuit, O’Leary became distracted, fell off her seat and lost control of the bus.

After the crash, the building was deemed unfit for occupancy and the shelter, which saves animals from being euthanized at other facilities, was forced to move to a new location, the lawsuit claims.

“As a result of the crash, many of the animals that WWR had planned to rescue were instead euthanized at animal control facilities throughout the Midwest,” the suit states.

The three-count suit seeks at least $300,000 in damages.

“Since 2003, we have facilitated the adoption of thousands of animals on a yearly basis; more dogs than any other Illinois facility for the last four years in a row,” Christy Anderson, Wright-Way’s executive director and founder, said in a statement announcing the suit.

“When this bus crashed through our front door, it took our breath away. What took 10 years to build was destroyed in seconds,” Anderson said.

A representative for the Alltown Bus Service did not immediately respond to a call for comment Thursday afternoon.