Update: Wednesday, Nov. 9 at 5:25 p.m.:
According to Becky Crocker's mother, the injured woman is expected to make a full recovery.
A North Callaway County school bus driver hit Crocker, 48, Tuesday morning as the bus attempted to cross the divided Highway 54 in Fulton.
Crocker's mother said her daughter is undergoing surgery. She has a shattered hip and stitches in her head, elbow and stomach.
Family members are hopeful she'll be out of the hospital by Saturday.
Original Story:
Twenty students from North Callaway School District escaped serious injury Tuesday morning when their school bus collided with an SUV, according to the school district.
However, a 5-year-old male student was rushed by ambulance to University Hospital in Columbia with “a bump on his head”, according to Fulton Police.
Fulton Police also report that the driver of the school bus, Patricia Klott, 54, of Warrenton, Mo, caused the accident by failing to yield to the oncoming SUV.
The accident occurred just before 7:30 a.m. in the westbound lanes Highway 54 in Fulton as the bus attempted to cross the divided highway on County Road 210 and collided with a Kia Sorento driven by Becky Crocker, 48, of Fulton.
Emergency responders transported Crocker to University Hospital ambulance with moderate injuries.
“It was pretty hectic out there,” Fulton Police Lt. Lyla Robbins said of the accident scene.
Lt. Robbins said the wreck could have been much worse had the driver of a semi-tractor trailer not been paying attention. The semi was loaded with heavy freight and was traveling behind the SUV that collided with the bus.
“It had the potential to be horrible,” Lt. Robbins said. “The truck driver was paying attention and got the loaded rig stopped.”
The 20 students on board the bus varied in age and grade, according to the district. The bus picks up students for kindergarten through 12th grade.
While only one of the twenty students on board was taken to the hospital by ambulance, Superintendent Dr. Bryan Thomsen said parents were taking their children to private doctors or to the emergency room on their own.
"We just want to make sure that everyone involved is okay, Thomsen said. “We will continue to monitor them and make sure there are no injuries."
Both the SUV and bus were severely damaged in the accident and had to be towed from the scene.
"It's always a blessing that no one was injured more than they were,” Thomsen added.
Justin and Stephanie Travis live just a few hundred feet from the crash scene, they heard the collision happen,"we were inside our home and we heard sirens coming up the highway and my wife said it sounded like they stopped out here" Justin said.
The school bus had just picked up their two kids, and they said they immediately knew something wasn't right when they heard the collision, "When you know something is wrong you get that instinct, I knew there was an accident because the bus just left and it was just fear, that's all I felt was fear" Travis said.
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