Heroic driver just glad to be alive
BETHEL, Wash. — School bus driver Cheryl Mooring is being called a hero for her actions during a Jan. 8 crash in which a Ford Bronco smashed head-on into her bus, killing the other driver and setting the 1999 AmTran Genesis on fire. But Mooring sees herself more as a survivor than a hero. “I’m just glad to be here,” Mooring said one week after the crash. “I’m feeling really, really mortal.” Mooring, who has driven a school bus for Bethel School District for 11 years, was picking up students on her morning run when the Ford Bronco crossed over the centerline and crashed into her bus “right between the headlights.” Temporarily pinned in the wreckage, with smoke and fire starting to engulf the bus, Mooring told two students who rushed to her aid to “leave me here and get out of here any way you can.” Despite a puncture wound in her leg and glass in her face, Mooring managed to free herself and safely evacuate her 22 passengers. “I had to put my face right in their face to see them,” she said, explaining that her glasses flew through the shattered windshield. Sixteen of the 22 middle-school passengers suffered minor injuries. Mooring said she won’t be able to return to work for at least six weeks and is uncertain whether she’ll want to drive a bus again. “I’m working on that,” she said.
2 drivers snared in urine scheme
ALBANY, N.Y. — Two school bus drivers were charged on Jan. 3 with endangering the welfare of a child after allegedly paying a kindergartner $5 to provide them with a urine sample. One of the drivers, Kimberly Holsapple, substituted the boy’s urine sample for her own during a drug screening. She apparently believed she would fail because she had recently used marijuana. The other driver charged in the scheme is Tanya Humbert. Both drivers were fired by their employer, Stock Transportation Inc., which contracts with the Albany City School District. The scheme came to light when the kindergartner’s mother called school officials the next day. A videotape taken from one of the buses showed Holsapple and Humbert discussing how to keep the urine warm, Stock officials said.
