By Ronnie Blair and Yolanda Fernandez
Tampa Tribune
HOLIDAY, Fla. — A 41-year-old woman was killed Wednesday morning when her Isuzu Trooper crossed the center line on Anclote Boulevard and collided with a school bus taking students to Paul R. Smith Middle School, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
The bus driver was hospitalized in serious condition, and 17 students and another adult on the bus were taken to hospitals to be treated for minor injuries, a highway patrol report said.
Tina Marie Hawkins of Holiday, the driver of the Isuzu, was pronounced dead at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg after the 8:30 a.m. accident, the report said.
The bus driver, Jennie Esther Smith, 44, of Port Richey, was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa. She has driven for the Pasco County school district since 2005.
Hawkins was eastbound on Anclote Boulevard near the Pasco-Pinellas county line when she crossed the center line and struck the left front of the bus, which was westbound with 40 students, the highway patrol report said. The Isuzu left the road and ended up on the south shoulder of Anclote.
“You’ve got to remember the size of the bus compared to the size of the vehicle,” said Sgt. Larry Kraus, highway patrol spokesman. “The bus outweighs the car tremendously, so that’s why there’s so much damage.
The parents of the 17 students taken to hospitals were contacted by telephone, said Summer Romagnoli, a school district spokeswoman.
The remaining students on the bus were taken to the school, and their parents also were contacted, she said.
One of the district’s crisis intervention teams went to the school to provide counseling for students who were in the accident or witnessed it, Romagnoli said.
“I was on my way home from dropping my two kids off at school and happened upon it right after it happened,” Duane Fuller said. “The best word for it would be pure chaos. But all emergency from Pasco, Pinellas, Tarpon (Springs) responded swiftly and got everything under control.”
Chris Stecker and his wife were driving to work and were three cars behind the school bus when the crash happened.
“We saw the bus start moving over to the right-hand shoulder, then the car that was heading eastbound was swerving all over the road, and then at the last minute, the car cut right in front of the bus and hit the left-hand side of the bus,” Stecker said.
“We ran up and started getting kids off the bus,” he said. “The car was on fire, and we wanted to get the kids as far away from the fire as possible. Then we started helping the kids with injuries.”
The students were scared but listened to those trying to help them.
“The police and paramedics were here real quick,” Stecker said. “They took really good care of the kids.”
Smith Middle School sixth-grader D’Angelo Bryant, 12, said he heard others on the bus say a car was swerving, then heard the bus driver scream. “That’s when she hit the brakes really hard and crashed into it and that’s when the bus, ... the front tire completely went down and the back went up,” D’Angelo said.
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