19 Youngsters Die in Crash of School Bus

A school bus was hit from behind by a delivery truck and plunged into a watery gravel pit this morning, killing at least 19 youngsters and injuring 49 other people, authorities said.

Divers pulled several bodies from the 12 feet of murky water covering the bus, which was carrying students to junior and senior high schools in Mission, Tex., when it fell onto its side into the 40- to 45-foot hole.

“They were just trapped. We had to break the glass of the windows to get in,” said Al Nye, a scuba diver who said he pulled out seven bodies. Nye, who was driving his children to school at the time of the accident, said, “You couldn’t see at all in there.”

Mike Cox, spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at least 18 young people, ages 12 to 18, were killed in the 7:40 a.m. accident, which occurred in clear, dry weather near the Mexican border about 75 miles from Brownsville.

Rescuers used a crane to lift the bus from the water but divers continued searching at midday for more possible victims.

The number of people aboard the 70-seat bus was not immediately known. The bus driver and the truck driver were being treated at hospitals, authorities said. Their conditions were not known.

The owner of the unfenced pit beside the road was not immediately known.

“We’re going crazy here,” said firefighter Ruben Ortiz. The youngsters’ parents “are very hysterical. They have really lost control, some of them.”

Cox said it was the worst school bus accident in Texas history. The two worst such accidents in U.S. history occurred in Kentucky. In 1988, 24 children and three adults on a church outing died in a fiery collision near Carrollton. In 1959, 27 people were killed when a bus went into a creek in Prestonsburg.