Boy, 9, Hurt as School Bus Crashes Through Residence’s Brick Wall

One student was slightly injured when a school bus crashed through a brick wall early Monday, an accident that authorities said may have been caused by a sleepy driver.

A 9-year-old boy riding the bus suffered a cut on his face and a bruised head in the 8:50 a.m. accident, police said. He was taken by ambulance to St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital, where he was treated and released.

Two other boys riding the bus, 10 and 14, were not injured.

Driver Emily C. Smith, 59, was en route to Phoenix School, a special-education campus at Camarillo Airport, and traveling about 40 mph when she lost control of the bus near the intersection of Pleasant Valley Road and Ridge View Street.

The bus plowed over three road signs--including one that read “Drive Safely”--and a traffic light before smashing through a 10-foot-high residential sound wall.

An investigation is continuing into the cause of the accident, but California Highway Patrol officials said they believe Smith may have fallen asleep.

“It’s likely she may have dozed off,” said CHP Officer Todd Wonders. Smith is a diabetic, but Wonders said he is uncertain whether her medical condition played a part.

Wonders added that Smith, who has worked for Laidlaw Transit Inc. since 1983, did not indicate there were mechanical failures that could have caused the accident.

“Had that been the case, she would have been eager to tell me about it,” Wonders said.

Smith, who sustained only minor bruising in the accident, was questioned at the scene.

Authorities did not cite her.

Laidlaw officials placed Smith on paid leave, as required by state law, until post-accident drug and alcohol test results come back in three to four days, said Laidlaw manager Major Patterson.

“She doesn’t know what happened,” Patterson said. “She said one minute she was driving along, and then the next thing she knew, she was knocking down a post.”

The Ventura County superintendent of schools office contracts with Laidlaw to run 81 buses, which transport 760 special-needs children each day.

“In the 7 1/2 years that I’ve been here, this is the first injury accident we’ve had involving students,” said Marc Sattler, transportation coordinator for the county schools office.

The accident left a gaping hole in the sound wall in the backyard of a Woodside Greens house. Laidlaw will pay to reconstruct Clara Zinno’s cinder-block wall, officials said.

“I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth,” said Zinno, who has lived at her Bent Twig Avenue home for 15 years. “When I heard a noise, I looked out and saw the bus breaking through the wall.”

Leo Garcia, who works for a landscaping company, was blowing leaves in front of the Woodside Market nearby when the bus jumped the curb only a couple of feet away from where he was standing.

“I was working the blower and had to run to get out of the way,” Garcia said. “The bus was going very fast and seemed like it was speeding up. My heart was pounding very fast.”

Times photographer Steve Osman and correspondent Nick Green contributed to this story.