Hays school bus with 44 pre-K students, 11 adults rolls over in Bastrop County; two dead

At least two people, including a child, died Friday afternoon after a Hays school district bus with 44 pre-K students and 11 adults rolled over in western Bastrop County off Texas 21.

The Tom Green Elementary School students were returning from a field trip to a Bastrop County zoo, according to a statement from the Hays Consolidated Independent School District.

The crash occurred at 2751 W. Texas 21 near the intersection at Caldwell Road, EMS said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The bus was headed west on Texas 21 when a concrete truck that was headed east veered into the lane and struck the bus around 2 p.m., said Sgt. Deon Cockrell of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Several children flew out of the bus, he said.

The bus had no seatbelts because it was a 2011 model, said Tim Savoy, a Hays school district spokesman. School buses made since 2017 do have seatbelts, he said.

Cockrell said it was unclear at this time what caused the driver of the truck to swerve into the opposite lane.

The child who died was a boy, said Kevin Parker, division chief of Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services. Officials did not give the boy's age.

Cockrell said a man in a Dodge Charger following the bus struck the bus and also was killed. It was not clear if that man was part of the group from the school.

Cockrell said the driver of the concrete truck was cooperating with authorities, noting that it's uncertain if the driver will be charged at this time pending the outcome of the DPS investigation.

EMS evaluated 53 people for injuries. Parker said four people were taken to a hospital via helicopter with critical injuries, although he did not state whether the injured were children or adults.

Another six people were taken to the hospital by ambulance with potentially serious injuries, Parker said. Others were treated at the scene or taken to the hospital for minor injuries. Parker did not say how many were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, but noted that an ambulance bus was used to take 10 people with minor injuries.

In a Friday night letter to Hays school district families, Superintendent Eric Wright thanked first responders at the scene and state leaders who offered support, as well as staff members of Bastrop ISD, "who have been both at the scene and in close contact with us since moments after the accident occurred."

He also thanked the driver of the bus, whom he did not name.

"Though injured, she insisted that medical personnel tend to the children first," Wright wrote in the letter. "Additionally, the other adults on the bus also focused their attention on the children first, despite their own injuries.

"I wish I could end this correspondence by saying that everything will be alright. For most of us, it eventually will. But, there are grieving families tonight who will never know life again as it was before. Let us continue to focus on them in our hearts and in our prayers."

After the children had been evacuated from the bus, it leaned against a grassy slope on the north side of the road. All the windows on the right side of the bus were cracked and those near the front of the bus bore gaping holes. Plastic water bottles lay strewn near the bus’s back wheel.

Family members are reunited with kids

Family members of students on the bus were reunited with the children at Tom Green Elementary School. Reunification was completed by 6:45 p.m., Wright said in his letter to families.

Jonathan Rivera and his wife, Cynthia Rivera, walked out of Tom Green Elementary School shortly before 6 p.m. They said they had just found out their 5-year-old niece was OK.

“This was her first school field trip because she had just transferred from Austin, so this just sucks,“ Cynthia Rivera said.

Cynthia Yescas said her 4-year-old nephew was on the bus. She said he was OK, but she and another relative were going to take him to the hospital because he was still a little hurt.

“The kids are more scared than anything else,” she said.

Residents, driver describe aftermath of crash

Alejandro Anaya, who lives across from the site of the bus crash, was at home when he heard the crash happen. Texas 21 can be dangerous because people drive fast on the two-lane road, where the speed limit is 65 mph, he said.

He pointed to a tree in his front yard that was tilted from a previous crash.

“The speed this highway has, it’s not safe,” Anaya said.

When the crash happened, his family sprang into action to calm the frightened children. The family gave the students water and cool towels, he said.

Some children were afraid to get on the bus that arrived to take them to reunite with their parents, he said. They were afraid of another crash.

Across from Anaya’s house, the school bus in the crash lay tilted on an angle on the slanted, grassy shoulder.

“Some of (the students) were really, really badly injured, and some of them were OK; they just had minor scratches,” Anaya said.

It’s scary to think about crashes involving children, he said.

“It was bad, not something someone would want to see on a kid, especially with a family,” Anaya said, gesturing to his children playing with toy trucks in his yard.

When Tyler Meachum, who lives a few houses down from the crash site, tried to go home from work, officers told him the crash involved a school bus.

At first Meachum panicked, worried his own son, who goes to a Bastrop school, was involved, he said.

Meachum and his family have lived off State Highway 21 for two years, but their son will start driving this year and they plan to moved closer into town, he said.

“There’s a lot of people that need to be refreshed on their driving course,” Meachum said.

The Bastrop school district was rerouting buses because of the wreck, so he needed to go to another site to pick up his child, he said.

“I, unfortunately, have kind of been waiting for this to happen with a bus because there are so many wrecks on here,” Meachum said. “I just figured it was a matter of time.”

Carl Jaynes, who was driving an RV, said he had been sitting on the road behind the crash site in his vehicle for almost three hours.

He’d been on his way from San Antonio to his home in Arkansas when he got stuck in traffic caused by the crash. He couldn’t turn his long RV around on the two-lane highway, so he was waiting for the crash site to clear, he said.

Jaynes said he didn’t think he had seen a school bus crash as bad as this one.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott comments on crash

In a statement on X, Gov. Greg Abbott called for Texans to pray for the victims of the crash. He said he'd spoken with Wright, the Hays district superintendent, "and offered the state's full support as they help their community through this tragedy."

"I thank the first responders and law enforcement officers who were on the scene immediately and continue to help their fellow Texans who were injured," Abbott said in the statement.

This is a developing story. Check back for more updates.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Hays school bus with 44 pre-K students crashes in Bastrop County