School bus crash injures 13

Thirteen people, 10 of them Toledo-area students, were taken to area hospitals after a school bus collided with a minivan Friday afternoon on Airport Highway in Springfield Township.

Toledo Public Schools spokesperson Patty Mazur said the bus is a TPS school bus. It was shuttling students to and from the school's aviation center for a program on aircraft mechanics at Toledo Express Airport.

According to Ohio State Highway Patrol officials, the TPS bus was driving westbound on Airport Highway while the Oldsmobile minivan was headed eastbound. The minivan crossed left of center, colliding with the school bus.

It is unclear how fast the school bus or the minivan were traveling at the time of the collision.

The students were high school students, ranging age between 16-18, the state patrol said in a release Friday afternoon. Most of the students on the bus are from Bowsher High School but a few were from Waite High School.

The accident happened at around 12:15 p.m. near the intersection of Airport Highway and Old Airport Highway near Albon Road in western Lucas County, about 2 miles east of Toledo Express Airport.

The force of the impact with the 2004 Oldsmobile minivan knocked the bus over onto its side and sent it down an embankment. Debris littered the stretch of the four-lane State Rt 2.

Patrol Lieutenant John Altman said none of the injuries to the students are life-threatening. All of the students and the bus driver, 48-year-old Sharon Champion of Millbury, were transported to St. Luke's Hospital in Maumee.

At least four of the 10 students were injured and all 10 went to St. Luke's Hospital to be checked out as a precaution. A hospital spokesperson said the students were treated and released.

Lieutenant Altman said the students were able to crawl out of the bus on their own through the rear emergency door and emergency hatches in the roof.

"You're always concerned when you start talking about school buses," said Lt. Altman. "How many kids do we have? Are the kids injured? What are the conditions of the children on the bus? So these are concerns anytime you hear a school bus. We'd much rather walk up and see it be a minor fender bender with a bus than something like this where the bus ends up being turned over."

Concerned parents of the students rushed to the crash site, fearing the worst.

"(Vehicles) travel pretty quickly on this road - 45-50 mph if they are doing the speed limit," said John Canaday, a TPS parent. "It's not a good place for an accident."

Two people were inside the minivan - 32-year-old Elmer Johnson, Jr. and 25-year-old Angela Johnson, both of Montpelier, a town in western Williams County. Both were air-lifted by an air ambulance to St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo. Both have "life-threatening injuries," OHP officials said.

The Johnsons were trapped in the mangled wreck and had to be extricated from the minivan, state patrol said. The minivan's front-end was crumpled, and firefighters had to cut the vehicle's roof open and pull off its side doors to free the two occupants.

Elmer Johnson, the driver, is listed in critical condition, while Angela Johnson is listed in fair condition, a Mercy Health partner spokesperson said. Angela was listed in serious condition upon arriving at St. Vincent.

Amelia Wood, a 16-year-old sophomore from Bowsher High School, said everyone screamed when the bus turned over.

"Some of us saw it coming," she said. "I was looking up at the ceiling and didn't see what happened. The next thing I knew we were on our side."

Wood said she and another student helped the driver, who couldn't get out of her seat.

"She was shaking like crazy," Wood said.

John Gilliland, business manager for Toledo Public Schools, said he arrived about 20 minutes after the accident to find students standing near the wreckage.

"They seemed to be very calm," he said.

Gilliland said he talked to the driver, who inquired about the condition of the students.

"It's always a scary scene when you go up, especially with any bus accident, especially when you see a school bus like ours on its side," he added.

Fifteen-year-old Waite High sophomore Bill Canaday said he was on his cell phone when he was thurst forward into the seat cushion.

"Last thing I knew I was on my cell phone," said Bill Canaday, a 15-year-old Waite High School sophomore. "The next thing we were all flying into the seat in front of us. We were then thrown to the other side of the bus. As soon as we landed, we all looked for the person next to us and asked if they were okay. If they said yes, then we would ask someone else."

"We didn't see anyone that was too badly injured," Bill added. "So, we just stayed calm."

A stretch of Airport Highway between Albon Road and Crissey was closed to traffic for about five hours, the highway patrol said.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

(FOX Toledo's Tiffany Tarpley, WJBK FOX 2 Detroit, and The Associated Press contributed to this report)