One student goes to the hospital with minor injuries. The occupants of two SUVs also require treatment.
By JANET ZINK
Published August 26, 2003
GIBSONTON - It's the kind of phone call parents most fear.
"We've been in an accident," Jefferson High School student Shannon White, 14, told her mother via cell phone Monday.
White was among a busload of students from Hillsborough magnet schools who were shaken up but not seriously injured when their bus was hit by a sport-utility vehicle on Interstate 75 south of Gibsonton Drive shortly after 4 p.m.
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, Kenneth Friend was driving a blue SUV north on I-75 when he hydroplaned on the wet road, slid through the median and shoved a southbound SUV into the bus before settling on the grass by the onramp at Gibsonton Drive.
The bus was taking elementary, middle and high school children from the schools to the Summerfield subdivision. One female student from King Senior High sustained minor injuries and was taken to Brandon Regional Hospital. The rest were picked up by parents or put on another bus for the ride home.
Friend was taken to Tampa General Hospital. The driver of the other SUV and his wife, who officials said is pregnant, were also taken to a local hospital. The couple, who were not identified, were able to walk from their vehicle to the ambulance.
Several students on the bus used cell phones to call their parents and let them know what had happened.
"That's the reason I bought my daughter a cell phone," said Mark Peruzzi, who stood at the side of the interstate in the afternoon drizzle and waited for his 15-year-old daughter Teresa to get off the bus. "She doesn't use it unless it's an emergency."
She emerged from the bus unharmed but crying and clutching her algebra book.
Cory Wochnik, 11, who attends Young Middle School, said that after his ordeal, he'll reconsider his passion for video games with lots of car crashes.
"Kids think the games are fun," he said. "Until you find out what they're really like."
