Teen hit by car near bus stop
Deputies say the Dunedin student was crossing Curlew Road to get to her stop. She was taken to a hospital.
By RICHARD DANIELSON, NORA KOCH and ROBERT FARLEY
Published March 2, 2005
DUNEDIN - A Dunedin teenager was hit by a car as she tried to cross Curlew Road on her way to her bus stop Tuesday morning, officials said.
The accident took place about 6:18 a.m. on Curlew Road, about a quarter-mile west of County Road 1.
Countryside High School student Kelsey Nicole Reeser, 17, was flown to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, where she was in serious condition.
Kelsey lives on the south side of Curlew Road and was trying to cross the road to get to her bus stop on the north side of the road, Pinellas County sheriff's Sgt. Tim Goodman said.
She was about three-quarters of the way across the eastbound lane of Curlew when she was hit by an eastbound Nissan Altima driven by Edith S. Campbell, 56, of Palm Harbor.
Kelsey's bus stop is at the corner of Curlew and Challenger Drive, Goodman said. That's a little west of where she was hit. The bus was not there when the accident took place.
School district spokesman Ron Stone said the bus stop did not violate a district policy that bans placing bus stops across multiple-lane highways from where students live. That's because Curlew Road is two lanes.
Moreover, Kelsey did not have to cross at the spot where she did, Stone said. The intersection of CR 1 is nearby and has a traffic signal and a pedestrian crosswalk. Also, if she needed to cross once the bus arrived, the bus driver would stop traffic in both directions on Curlew Road, Stone said.
The School District has been under fire in recent months since two girls died after being struck by oncoming vehicles near their bus stops. Both 16-year-old Rebecca McKinney of Clearwater and 8-year-old Brooke Ingoldsby of St. Petersburg were dropped off across multiple-lane roads from their neighborhoods in violation of school district policy.
On Tuesday, the school district sent personnel to the scene of the accident, but sheriff's officials told them they did not consider the accident to be related to bus transportation, Stone said.
There have been no complaints made about that bus stop, according to the route coordinator for the school district, Stone said.
Campbell, who lives about a quarter-mile away, was on her way to work with her headlights on when the accident took place, according to a family friend who acted as her spokesman Tuesday. She was concerned about Kelsey and had tried to call the hospital to find out how she was.
"Mrs. Campbell is very upset and distraught," said Campbell's friend, Bruce Bennington of Bradenton. "She has children and grandchildren."
Daniela Illiano, 16, saw the aftermath of the accident as she arrived at 6:20 a.m. to board her bus to Dunedin High School, where she is a junior. Although she and Kelsey attend different schools, she said they have known each other since kindergarten and catch their buses at nearby stops.
And Daniela knows that it can be unnerving to wait for a bus on that stretch of Curlew Road.
"So many people go so fast on that road, and when it's dark, in the morning, they go faster," she said.
Daniela, who lives with her family in the Waterford Crossing neighborhood, said Kelsey is a junior at Countryside. She described her as outgoing with a good sense of humor and a "true friend."
Vicki Cetera, whose son catches a bus to Palm Harbor Middle School from a close-by stop, said the bulldozers, barricades and piles of dirt, coupled with the darkness of morning, pose dangers to children walking along the busy road.
"It's dangerous just as a driver now," said Cetera, who is a nursing student and mother of a 13-ear-old son and 21-year-old daughter.
Sheriff's officials said the investigation is continuing. The accident took place on a part of Curlew where an $8.4-million road construction job is under way.
A quarter-mile east of the accident scene, on the other side of CR 1, Curlew will become a divided four-lane road with raised medians and left-turn lanes. An average of nearly 23,000 cars and trucks a day use the road.
In the area near Kelsey's home, road crews are resurfacing the road, building new sidewalks and improving drainage. That stretch of Curlew will become a transition area where the four lanes of traffic will narrow to two, Florida Department of Transportation spokeswoman Kris Carson said. The project is scheduled to be completed in spring 2006.
Stone said school administrators will review the location of the bus stop once construction is complete. If a bus cannot stop traffic in both directions, as on a two-lane road, the district will move the stop, he said.
Staff writer Lauren Bayne Anderson and researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.