Local News in Brief : Anaheim : Bus Windshield Broken; CHP Suspects Gunfire

Officials are investigating whether freeway gunfire shattered the windshield of an Anaheim school district bus carrying the Kennedy High School girls’ basketball team over the weekend, the California Highway Patrol said Monday.

The bus driver, Bonnie Taylor, 45, told investigators that she saw a flash Saturday night from what appeared to be a gun coming from another car, then the right windshield of the bus popped and glass flew, said Lyle Whitten, a CHP spokesman.

“We can’t rule out it was a gun, but we can’t say positively it was,” Whitten said.

None of the 22 passengers on the bus was reported injured. The team was returning from a playoff game in West Covina.

The bus was southbound on the San Gabriel River Freeway in the Whittier area when a brown pickup truck passed the bus at high speed. Then Taylor saw the flash, Whitten said.

Taylor pulled the bus over and radioed for another vehicle to take the players and coaches back to Anaheim, said Mike Murphy, Kennedy High’s assistant coach.

“The kids were pretty scared,” Murphy said. “She yelled back to the kids to get down because we were getting shot at.”

Whitten said CHP investigators would examine the windshield today.

It was the second such incident in a week involving an Orange County school bus. In an apparently unrelated incident Thursday, a bus from Huntington Beach’s Edison High School was fired upon in Long Beach.