Bus Kills Girl Going to School : Tragedy: 6-year-old was being led across the street by her mother when she was hit. Vehicle was taking students to Garfield High when it struck child in intersection.

A 6-year-old girl who was being led across a street by her mother to go to school was struck and killed by a school bus Wednesday, authorities said.

The child, Yadira Cruz, was crossing the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Trinity Street in South Los Angeles when the bus struck her and her mother, Petra Castro, said California Highway Patrol Officer Alex Diaz.

Cruz, a first-grader at Trinity Street Elementary School, was knocked underneath the bus and then run over by the back left wheels. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The mother was knocked to her knees but not injured. She stood in the street screaming and crying desperately for help.

Castro, a mother of six, had been taking her daughter to school as she did every morning. “Oh, my God, they killed my daughter, the fruit of my womb,” she cried, sobbing as friends and relatives later led her away, so distraught she was barely able to walk.

The bus driver, Katrice Jackson, 21, of Compton, employed by Embree Buses, has not been charged with any wrongdoing, Diaz said. But he added: “An investigation is still pending.” According to a Los Angeles Unified School District official, the bus involved was carrying about a dozen children to a magnet school at Garfield High School.

After the accident, conflicting opinions emerged over the driver’s actions. According to Diaz, the bus driver was going east on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard shortly after 7 a.m. at a speed of “15 to 30 m.p.h.”

He said “the light turned red” while the bus was “in the middle of the intersection.”

But Petra Castro and her daughter stepped into the intersection “on their green light,” Diaz said.

A Los Angeles transportation official, Brian Gallagher, said the city has an extra three-second hold at that intersection--after King Boulevard’s lights go from yellow to red, and before the Trinity Street’s green lights operate--because it is unusually wide--155 feet. “That provides additional clearance time for vehicles on Martin Luther King to get through the intersection,” he said.

That hold would have given the bus even more time to pass through before the child started walking on a green signal. But Diaz and other CHP officials had no further comment Wednesday.

Diaz also said the bus “was unable to stop in time” to avoid the mother and child. Some at the scene said the bus involved appeared to be “racing” another bus just before the incident.

Rafaela Vasquez, a relative of the dead child, said she was just about to cross the street herself when the accident happened. “The light wasn’t for the bus,” she said.

Vasquez thought the little girl was still alive after the bus first hit her. “The girl was underneath the bus. I could see her moving,” she said. “But the bus kept on going . . . only braking bit by bit. Then she (the child) was struck by the rear wheels. If the driver had stopped quicker, she wouldn’t have been hit by the rear wheels.”

Diaz said the driver told officers she “heard screams and moved the bus forward, to see if anyone was underneath the bus.”

At the scene, CHP Officer Bryan Dobson said the accident may have been caused by a “visual observation problem” after “one bus pulled around (to pass) the other bus.”

But a local resident who asked only to be identified as Jose said he saw the accident, and the two buses “were racing one another. One bus would pass another, going back and forth.” But at the time of the accident, the second bus had stopped and the victims were far enough into the intersection that the bus hit the pair “on the driver’s side.”

Tom Bouthilet, regional manager for Mark IV Charter Lines, the parent company of Embree Buses, refused to say how long Jackson had been employed as a bus driver and declined to comment about the accident.

“We’re conducting an investigation of our own,” Bouthilet said. “There will be no comment until it is complete.”