EDINBURG — It remains unclear what happened yesterday morning when a 14-year-old Harlingen boy died after apparently falling out of the rear emergency door of a moving school bus.
The Vernon Middle School student and classmates were on a field trip to the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campus in Edinburg when the accident happened.
The bus was northbound on Highway 281 near the Freddy Gonzalez overpass in Edinburg when the teenager fell out of the emergency door at the back of the bus around 9:30 a.m., Edinburg police said.
The boy, whose name has not been released, was taken to an area hospital where he died of his injuries.
Officials said they did not know how he fell out. However, investigators will be reviewing video from a camera that was on the bus.
“This teenager sustained major head trauma and was transported to Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg, where he later succumbed to his injuries,” Edinburg Assistant Police Chief Oscar Trevino said.
“The accident is under investigation and we’re looking into all the circumstances leading up to this accident. We’re trying to find out what exactly took place before he fell out.”
Police spent most of the morning interviewing students and photographing the bus.
Harlingen school district spokesman Shane Strubhart said three buses from Vernon Middle School were taking students on a field trip to UTRGV. Only one of the buses was involved.
Each bus carried about 35 students, the driver and two teachers.
Counselors were dispatched to Edinburg to stand by some of the students while they were interviewed by police.
Strubhart declined to go into detail about the incident but said all other students were safe and returned to Harlingen right after the incident. Parents whose children were on the field trip were called. School district officials are still trying to find out exactly what happened.
Parents were waiting for their children when the school buses returned to Vernon. As the rain started to fall, parents picked up their children. Some students were visibly distraught, shedding tears at the passing of their classmate, too sad to finish the rest of the day at school.
Belinda Allen, whose granddaughter attends Vernon but was not on the bus, was there to pick her up.
“It’s very sad. We need to find out what’s going on, but it’s a sad thing,” she said.
“We’ll discuss it and find out what she knows and go from there. We still don’t know what actually happened.”
School bus video
There is a video from the bus, which will be submitted into evidence for investigation. The video will not be released while the investigation is pending.
Trevino said he does not know what the video shows.
Strubhart said they will review the footage and conduct their own investigation. In October, the school district approved the purchase of cameras for every school bus.
The system has a four-camera placement on the bus which allows for a 100-percent view of the interior of the bus, including the driver.
With the new technology, Strubhart said there should be a clear view of how the student fell out of the bus.
He said they will reevaluate bus safety if need be.
Federal law requires that all passenger and school buses have unlocked and accessible emergency exits when in use.
If there’s an accident and the front exit of the bus is damaged, students would have no other way out if an emergency exit were locked, Strubhart said.
The Texas Department of Public Safety is the principal state agency that regulates school buses.
