Children Slightly Injured in Crash

Ten schoolchildren suffered bumps and bruises Wednesday when the driver of their after-school day-care bus lost control and careened into a parked truck in Camarillo.

In addition, bus driver Sean Kavanaugh, 33, sustained a minor ankle injury in the 2:30 p.m. crash on Ciprian Avenue, just east of Appian Way in north Camarillo, authorities said.

Kavanaugh and the 10 children on the bus, most of them age 8 to 10, were taken to three area hospitals, where they were treated and released.

“Some of them were really shook up,” said Ventura County Fire Capt. Ron Topolinski.

As neighborhood kids on bicycles and curious adults stood watching, dozens of emergency workers descended on the scene in the residential area in seconds. Fire trucks and police cars filled the block, along with five ambulances.

The children on the small yellow bus had been picked up at several Camarillo schools and were headed to Pacific Camps and Family Resources on nearby Temple Avenue, school officials said.

Pacific Camps is a program that cares for students until their parents pick them up, said Paige Fisher, principal of Dos Caminos School, which had students on the bus.

According to California Highway Patrol officers, Kavanaugh had just left Dos Caminos and was headed to one more school when, for unknown reasons, he lost control of the bus and rear-ended an old Ford truck. The truck then struck a parked Dodge van before coming to rest partly atop the curb and sidewalk.

County Fire Chief Ted Smith said all but one of the injured students were wearing safety restraints, which is required by the bus company contract.

A spokesman for Pacific Camps declined to comment on the crash, which remained under investigation.

A second, unrelated crash occurred shortly before 4 p.m. in Ventura when a Ventura Unified School District bus carrying two special needs students crashed for unknown reasons near Partridge Drive and Telephone Road, according to the California Highway Patrol. No one was injured.