Discrepancies Mar Account of Death of Boy, 7 : Accident: Parents say that their son wouldn’t have been killed as he stepped from school bus if the district followed safety procedures.

The school district said Thursday it is investigating the death of a 7-year-old struck by a truck after he got off a school bus, an accident his parents said could have been avoided if the district had followed safety procedures.

Thomas E. Lanni, 7, was hit by a pickup truck on April 22 as he crossed Aliso Niguel Road. He died at the hospital.

Two days after the funeral, Thomas W. Lanni, 41, said he was “infuriated” by an account of his son’s death released after the accident by the Capistrano Unified School District.

“It’s incomprehensible to me that this situation should be allowed to exist,” he said. “They’re trying to blame my son, and he’s totally innocent.”

Jacqueline Price, a spokeswoman for the district, said last week that the school bus had not been displaying flashing lights to warn drivers of children disembarking, because all six of the children who get off at that stop live on the same side of the street.

But parents of four of those children said Thursday that they live across the street.

State law requires school buses to display flashing lights to stop traffic in both directions “when children are unloading from the school bus to cross a highway.”

Price acknowledged Thursday that four students do live on the other side of the street. But because the bus normally has pulled away by the time they cross, the driver is not required by law to flash his warning lights, she said.

“What we don’t know at this point is just what happened and why,” Price said. “We’re still talking to students and parents and trying to get a sense of what happened.”

Price acknowledged that there were several major discrepancies in the district’s initial account of the accident. “We weren’t intentionally inaccurate,” she said, “but we had limited information at the time.”

Barbara Lanni, 36, said her family moved to Orange County from New York only a week before the accident. She enrolled her son at Marian Bergeson Elementary School last Tuesday, and brought him to and from the school on Wednesday, his first day of classes.

“He had a wonderful day,” she recalled. When she offered to accompany him into the classroom, he replied, “No, Mommy, I’ll go in myself.”

At the school’s encouragement, she signed up for the bus and waited with him Thursday morning at the stop in front of her development.

“I physically got on the bus with Tommy, so he would feel OK, and introduced him to the other kids,” she said. “I told the bus driver that I was his mother. I specifically told him that my son was new, and that he did not know the area at all, that he was completely unfamiliar with the area. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him.’ I trusted him.”

School officials confirmed the substance of Barbara Lanni’s conversation with the driver, whom district officials have declined to identify. He could not be reached for comment.

At 3 p.m., Lanni said, she was waiting at the stop for her son, but the bus never arrived at Ambassador Place and Aliso Niguel.

But one stop earlier, at El Pilar and Aliso Niguel, Thomas Lanni speculated, his son may have become confused as the bus passed a nearby shopping center.

“He knew he was close to home,” Lanni said, “he was just unsure.”

Lanni was the first child off the bus, and was hit when a pickup truck pulled around the bus.

At the top of the hill, Barbara Lanni said she waited and waited for her son.

“I didn’t know what happened,” she said, “but I had a bad feeling. . . . I was at a loss as to where my little boy was going to be.”

After driving down the hill to the accident scene, she said, “I ran up to the bus and I looked around and Tommy wasn’t on the bus--I wished to God he was. I ran up to one of the officers and asked him if they had seen a little boy in a yellow shirt, but he didn’t want to look at me.”

After the accident, Price said that Thomas had darted into traffic to greet friends across the street.

But parents and children at the stop said the boy did not run into the street to greet friends. He had just moved to the area and knew no one, and, in any case, witnesses said, there were no children across the street at the time of the accident.

Price said the district’s earlier statement “was probably conjecture. . . . We don’t know why he ran across the street.”

Speed limit signs along Aliso Niguel Road also are a source of controversy.

Residents of the area said they have been demanding speed limit and “Children at Play” signs for years. They maintain that two signs bracketing the accident site were erected the weekend after the boy’s death.

Joan L. Eaton, who picks up her granddaughter at the stop each day, recorded in a log kept since the accident that city workers erected the two signs about noon on Sunday following the accident.

However, city Traffic Engineer Dave Rogers said the signs went up two days before the fatal collision.

“It was kind of a tragic coincidence, but there was nothing unusual with the sign posting,” Rogers said. “The process for installing them had been underway since December.”

It is not known how fast the truck driver was going. He has not been cited.

Lt. Dan Martini of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said the accident is still being investigated, adding, “We do have some question as to the accuracy of some of the information as it was related” to police.

The boy’s father described his son as “a bright young boy, very sweet.” Barbara Lanni said her son “had the best sense of humor and the most contagious laugh.”

The Lannis were effusive with their gratitude toward the Shepherd of the Hills Church, whose minister and congregation have reached out to them even though the couple had not had time to join the church.

“They have taken us into their church family like they have known us,” Barbara Lanni said, holding the funeral in the church and calling and visiting their home to help.

Times staff writers David Haldane and Frank Messina contributed to this story.