Middle School Student Dies In School Bus Accident

Surviving middle school feels like an accomplishment.  Peer pressure from classmates ramps up; in the age of smartphones, it is even harder to get away from your classmates’ taunts and self-aggrandizement outside of school hours.  If you plan to go to college, the pressure is on to get good grades so that you can qualify for the high school classes and programs that will look good on college applications and help you get acceptance and, ideally, scholarships to the university you want to attend.  When you are an adult, and you reassure your children, nieces, nephews, and younger cousins that their middle school days will soon be behind them, you should be referring to garden variety embarrassment in front of peers and facing scary teachers when you broke school rules or performed poorly on assignments.  School bus accidents where people suffer life-threatening injuries are a never event, much more horrifying than the usual dreaded moments that make middle school an unpleasant experience.  If your child got injured while riding a school bus, contact a Columbia Personal Injury lawyer.

School Bus Blew a Tire and Overturned on Interstate, Injuring Students and Teachers

In April 2025, a school field trip ended in tragedy.  A group of students from Pine Ridge Middle School in Lexington, South Carolina took a field trip to Charlotte, traveling in three school buses.  While the group was traveling back to Lexington, a tire on one of the buses blew out while the buses were driving on Interstate 77.  This caused the bus to strike a guardrail and overturn; there was not a lot of traffic on the highway, and the affected bus did not strike any other vehicles.

The bus that overturned was carrying 35 students and three adults.  An eighth grader, Jose Maria Gonzalez Linares, died of injuries he sustained in the collision.  21 other occupants of the bus suffered injuries serious enough to require medical treatment.  First responders transported the most severely injured bus occupants to nearby hospitals by medical helicopter; they transported the other injured people to hospitals by ambulance, since their condition was stable enough for this to be a safe option.  A news report released several hours after the accident said that five students were in critical condition.

The legal remedies available to students injured in school bus accidents depend on the factors that contributed to the accident.  For example, if the accident involved multiple vehicles, and the school bus driver was not at fault, the injured students’ families have the right to sue the at fault driver or the company legally responsible for the at fault driver’s vehicle.  If the school bus driver was at fault, then the school district that employs the bus driver is the legally responsible party.

Let Us Help You Today

The personal injury lawyers at the Stanley Law Group can help you pursue a bus accident claim.  Contact The Stanley Law Group in Columbia, South Carolina or call (803)799-4700 for a free initial consultation.

Sources:

wyff4.com/article/south-carolina-school-bus-crash-student-killed/64522009

abcnews.go.com/US/school-bus-overturns-chester-county-south-carolina/story?id=120926898