Child’s fatal collision with school bus investigated

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This article was published 19/11/2011 (5363 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RCMP have sent specialists in traffic-collision analysis to Bunibonibee Cree Nation in Oxford House to try to determine how a six-year-old girl died under the wheels of her school bus Thursday afternoon.

Mounties don’t yet know if the school bus was equipped with safety equipment standard and compulsory for all school buses in the provincial education system, Cpl. Miles Hiebert said Friday.

Nor could they say yet whether the girl was crossing the road, or if her home was on the side of the road on which the bus stopped.

Officials at the Bunibonibee Cree Nation band office and Oxford House Elementary School were not answering their phones Friday.

“Initial investigation indicates that a student had gotten off the school bus at a residence in Oxford House and was subsequently run over by the school bus as it drove away,” Hiebert said.

“The 43-year-old male driver of the school bus immediately stopped and sought medical assistance,” he said.

“The student… was transported to the nursing station where she was pronounced deceased. Her name will not be released,” Hiebert said.

Provincial school buses have been required to have an extendable safety arm mounted on the bus since a seven-year-old boy died in 1996 in St. Norbert after getting off his school bus.

The arm forces kids to take a wide berth around the bus and remain in the view of the driver. Provincial education officials said Friday they cost about $200 each.

Keith Thomas, the province’s leading expert on school safety, said that not all First Nations school authorities have the safety arms installed on their buses. Provincial rules do not apply on the reserves, which are under federal jurisdiction.

“They wouldn’t necessarily be installed when the bus is purchased,” said Thomas, risk manager for the Manitoba School Boards Association. “Certainly, not all the reserve buses have those arms.

“Some reserves follow the provincial regs very much, others not so much,” Thomas said.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca