AUBURN (KTXL) — It was a scary morning Monday for one Auburn neighborhood after a school bus crashed through several backyards.
“I was in my house and I heard something that sounded like a big dump truck dropping its load of boulders in my backyard,” said Beverly Hill.
Hill said she and several other neighbors came outside to find the school bus had crashed in the front yard of a home on Country Meadow Court.
“And then I realized that there were ambulances coming and fire engines coming,” Hill recalled.
The driver and one student got off the bus and were traumatized but ultimately OK. The CHP reports the student was experiencing leg pain.
“The driver looked like he was OK. I mean how can you tell? But he was talking and the young girl was also OK,” Hill said.
One neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said the bus tore up his backyard, as well as his neighbor’s. The bus made an “S” as it crashed through three fences.
“He went through the back fence on our neighbor’s property. Came through our fence, which would be the south end of the fence line,” the neighbor said. “Traveled through our yard along the fence before hitting a couple of trees, some irrigation, some plant beds. And came at an angle back up into our neighbor’s property here through our fence.”
Before the crash, the school bus was heading west on Bell Road.
Hill says the student had just been picked up and her mother was driving right behind the bus as it left the road.
“And the mother saw the bus careening off and down and through the two yards. So she came around here to make sure everything was OK and her daughter was OK,” Hill said.
The CHP is investigating the crash. So far the agency has not said if speed, drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash nor have CHP officials said what caused the bus to leave the road. Both the driver and the student were wearing seatbelts at the time of the crash.