No citations in fatal bus crash; investigation continues - Chicago Daily Herald

The scene would make any parent gasp.

A school bus was flipped on its side with the rear emergency door kicked open, the windshield and side windows shattered. There were bloody marks on the ceiling.

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A mangled yellow Jeep Wrangler was nearby, not far from a tan Jeep Cherokee with front-end damage.

The horrific three-vehicle crash at 8 a.m. Friday in rural northern Lake County left one driver dead. However, the 34 students on the bus suffered only minor injuries, even though the vehicle rolled over during the crash, authorities said.

Lake County Sheriff's Office Operations Chief Brian Keller said the high-backed seats played some role in protecting children, and young children are more resilient than adults. Maybe it was something more.

"Honestly, it really is a miracle and a blessing that not one of these kids is more seriously injured than they are," Keller said.

Officials say one of the vehicles ran a red light at the fully signaled intersection of Route 173 and Kilbourne Road near Wadsworth moments before the crash, and they are working to determine which had the right of way. No citations have been issued.

Keller said police have conflicting witness statements about what happened.

Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran said the driver of the Wrangler, Phillip Smith, 62, of Beach Park, died at the scene. A woman who answered the phone at Smith's house said she did not want to comment.

The school bus was carrying the students and the driver to Newport Elementary School, Beach Park Elementary District 3 Superintendent Robert DiVirgilio said. The school serves kindergarten through fifth-grade students.

"It was scary," said third-grader Mariah Smith of Zion, who was on the bus and lost a shoe. "At first, I didn't know what was going on."

Maria's father, Cliff Smith, came upon the accident site as he was headed to the College of Lake County. He reunited with his daughter at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, where 25 kids were taken.
"I'm feeling better now," Smith said. "It was a rough morning."

Dr. Debra Susie-Lattner, vice-president of Medical Management at Condell, said all of the injuries they treated were minor. Bruises, scrapes and some broken bones were reported.

Social workers from the school and hospital were in the emergency room with families to work through the trauma, she added.

Six bus passengers, ages 5 to 11, were taken to Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan, spokesman John Griffin said.

One 11-year-old girl was in fair condition with a skull fracture. She was stabilized and taken by ambulance to Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. Five other students were in good condition, he said.

Authorities said the driver and passenger of the Cherokee were picked up immediately after the accident by an unidentified motorist and taken to Vista Medical Center West in Waukegan. Griffin said they were in good condition.

Three other students were sent to St. Catherine's Medical Center in Pleasant Prairie, Wis., according to a spokeswoman. Their conditions weren't unknown.

Lake County sheriff's Sgt. Sara Balmes said a deputy accompanied the bus driver to a hospital. Her condition was unknown Friday. Balmes would not identify the driver or the hospital.

Keller said the initial investigation shows the bus was heading west on Route 173, the Cherokee was eastbound, and the Wrangler was driving south on Kilbourne when they converged at the intersection.

Speed limits are 55 mph on Kilbourne and 45 mph on Route 173.

Keller said the bus slammed into the passenger side of the Wrangler. He said the bus flipped, rolled over, then landed on its passenger side and slid across the road, where it hit the Cherokee. The bus continued sliding, and eventually came to rest facing east in the westbound lane, Keller said.

Barbara Taylor said she heard the loud thud, saw the bus on its side and ran from her house at the northwest corner of Kilbourne and Route 173 with blankets.

She ran to the bus and saw crying children suffering from mostly eye injuries and bloody noses.

"They were scared, and they didn't seem to know what happened," Taylor said.

The Route 173 intersection was closed until about 6 p.m. while investigators examined the crash scene. They will use witness statements, vehicle computer evidence, skid marks, debris and other elements to determine what happened.

"You treat it like a crime scene. It's a matter of piecing it together," Keller said.

The bus was owned by Durham Bus Services, said spokesman Blaine Krage. He said the company is working with authorities to determine the cause of the crash.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the driver of the Jeep who sustained fatal injuries, as well as with all of those affected by this accident," Krage said in an emailed statement.

The last documented fatality on a school bus in Illinois was in 2003, when a 14-year-old girl was killed after the bus driver drove off a downstate road, overcorrected and overturned the bus. The driver and 15 others were severely injured in the crash.

Statewide, less than 1 percent of crashes involving school buses have resulted in a fatality of any kind between 2007 and 2011, according to the most recent Illinois Department of Transportation data.

In those five years, 15 occupants of other vehicles involved in a crash with a school bus have died and another 1,200 were injured.

According to an IDOT spokesman, there were 53 accidents at the intersection of Kilbourne and Route 173 between 2004 and 2011, including 24 injury crashes and one fatal crash.

Because of the high total, the intersection received traffic signals in August 2012 as part of the federal Highway Safety Improvement Program. There is no information on whether crashes decreased after traffic signals were installed, state officials said.

Authorities said 27 fire departments from northern Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin participated in the rescue effort, and 18 ambulances were sent to scene.

Newport Fire Protection District Chief Mark Kirschhoffer could not explain how the children were not more seriously injured.

"Amazing," he said. "Thank God it turned out that way."

Daily Herald staff writers Eric Peterson, Jake Griffin, Jessica Cillela, Russell Lissau and Jake Griffin contributed to this report.

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Watergate sage flogged by lapdog media - Boston Herald

“One of the five men arrested early Saturday in the attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters is the salaried security coordinator for President Nixon’s reelection committee.” — The Washington Post, June 19, 1972. By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

So began the storied career of Bob Woodward and the rise of an era of journalism that bowed at the altar of investigative reporting. The press became obsessed with kicking over the rocks that hid government corruption and stonewalling.

And now a mere 40 years later Woodward, the golden boy of the Beltway, has become the center of a D.C. insiders’ dustup. Why? Because he had the temerity to challenge the White House’s story line about the “sequester,” an issue the American public currently seems not to care about.

The entire Woodward vs. The White House contretemps is the ultimate in insider political baseball. Woodward wrote a column stating that Obama did not negotiate in good faith with the Republicans during the 2011 budget negotiations over the debt deal. Cue a giant yawn from 99 percent of the voters.

Getting deeper into the weeds, Woodward asserted that Obama has “moved the goal posts” since the negotiations. In fact it was Obama and Jack Lew, now the Treasury secretary, who proposed the dreaded concept of the sequester. Bet that tidbit got you to perk up your ears. From this seed sprouted the current cause celebre.

Since all Washington political strategy is based on the blame game, it was imperative for the White House to ensure Republicans were on the receiving end of blame for the sequester and potential damage it might cause to American workers and the economy. Hence the Woodward allegation could not go unchallenged.

It fell to Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, to dissuade Woodward and discredit his assertions regarding the budget negotiations and the rise of the sequester. Sperling chewed Woodward out over the phone and in a follow-up email told Woodward he would “regret” his claim about the White House and Congress wheeling and dealing in 2011.

To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it all comes down to what your definition of “regret” is. Woodward takes this as a warning whereas the White House and liberal media take it as routine semantics. Regardless, the bottom line is this episode epitomizes the Obama strategy for controlling the press.

The Obama White House is the most thin-skinned and toughest since Nixon. They haven’t achieved the pinnacle of illegality that the Halderman boys perfected, but when it comes to dusting off the brass knuckles they are right in the game.

The key difference between now and 1972 is the obsequiousness of the press corps. Despite being treated by the White House with contempt at best, the press corps fawns and flops for Obama. Never a hardball. Rarely even a fastball. Usually a hanging curve ball.

The irony is in the current fight many in the press are siding with Obama rather than their former hero and poster boy Woodward. A plethora of pundits and columnists have unloaded a broadside against Woodward taunting him as out of touch with the reality of the practice of journalism. The courageous reporter has become a punch line to a cadre of liberals in the media.

All of this would be an entertaining sideshow if it weren’t emblematic of the success of the White House strategy of marginalizing the press and dominating the news cycle. Obama has fewer official press conferences than any of his recent predecessors. He avoids impromptu questions from reporters — Friday’s relatively brief encounter in the briefing room being one of those rare exceptions. The White House has upped the Rose Garden strategy by surrounding the Rose Garden with barbed wire.

Obama permits interviews with admiring talk show hosts and news anchors that play lapdog rather than watchdog. The cherry on the media control sundae is the White House has set the gold standard for using new and social media to drive its message and engage supporters.

As for the future relationship between the D.C. press corps and this administration — by attacking the biggest of the media big dogs, the White House has raised the stakes just in case any smaller dog wants to challenge its message.

Tobe Berkovitz is an advertising professor at Boston University.

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Bruins bring some smiles to Newtown - Boston Herald

NEWTOWN, Conn. — There were far more Bruins who wanted to make the trip here yesterday than there were seats on the plane.

Seven Bruins players and coach Claude Julien made the 35-minute flight from Logan to Waterbury-Oxford Airport yesterday afternoon aboard team owner Jeremy Jacobs’ jet, then spent a couple of hours in this lovely little town in the Connecticut hills.

It was a way for one professional sports team to lend its support for the still-suffering residents of Newtown, where 20 children and six staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School were murdered Dec. 14.

With some 600 fans on hand in a fieldhouse, the Bruins’ Andrew Ference, Dougie Hamilton, Daniel Paille, Adam McQuaid, Chris Bourque, Rich Peverley and Tyler Seguin played floor hockey, signed autographs and posed for photos.

At a session earlier in the day, ex-Bruins Bob Sweeney and Tom Songin took part — and brought the Stanley Cup with them.

Julien said that even though the Bruins arrived home from their victory in Winnipeg at about 2 a.m. yesterday and were scheduled for a rare day off, many more players would have made this trip if there had been room on Jacobs’ plane.

“Yes, this is their day off,” Julien said. “But it’s something you didn’t even think twice about.”

Bourque took a break from his floor hockey game to talk about what this meant to him.

“I’m so happy to have the opportunity to do this,” Bourque said. “To come out here and play a little street hockey and see all these kids smiling and having fun, it’s great.

“This community has been through so much the last couple of months. I hope (to) maybe help them forget about the things that have happened for a little bit, a couple of hours. To see all these kids smiling and having fun, it’s great to be able to do this.”

The Bruins are not the first team to come here — the New York Knicks, the UConn men’s basketball team, members of the Red Sox and ex-manager Bobby Valentine, MLS players and several other pro, amateur and Olympic athletes also have made the trip. It’s obvious how much these visits mean here, especially to the kids.

“It’s been amazing, it’s been absolutely amazing,” said Newtown resident Robin Moore, mother of 11-year-old Eric. The Moores knew many of the shooting victims, and Eric was a close friend of two of them.

“I think a lot of the adults would still be (curled up in a corner somewhere),” Moore said. “But for the kids, we have to keep things going. We want them to be kids and just forget for a while.

“The outpouring from everyone has been fantastic. We’re a town that’s reeling, so it’s nice to have this for the kids. We need it. We need some escape, we need some relief. We just need to let the kids be kids.”

Bill, a Newtown resident who used to live in Natick and Wellesley, was on hand with his sons, Leander, 10, and Christian, 12. Like many residents, he requested his last name not be used.

“I love the Bruins, and the kids are certainly excited about this,” he said. “They appreciate that they’re not alone in getting through this. This is a small community .?.?. everybody knows someone (affected by the tragedy) — probably someone who lives on your street.”

A mother named Erica, on hand with 10-year-old son Chris, hoped this event would especially help the families who lost children. Many such families were on hand.

“I wish they could forget but they can’t,” she said. “Everything is going to take a long time. I don’t think you can ever forget something like this. I hope this is a chance for the brothers and sisters, especially, to feel good for a while.”

Ference said the horror at Sandy Hook broke the hearts of parents everywhere — including within the B’s locker room.

“It hits close to home for a lot of us on the team who have kids,” Ference said. “You can’t even fathom what happened. So I just think any kind of support you can give the community is a no-brainer.

“As a sports team, there’s not a whole lot you can do. You feel kind of helpless. The one thing we can do is try to make people smile, have fun, have a good day. I think it’s extremely important.”

Julien and the players took a few moments to speak with each person getting an autograph — and Julien clearly felt a close connection to this community.

“I really admire these people for what they’ve gone through,” he said. “It can’t be easy. At a season of the year when we should have been celebrating, we ended up having to mourn.

“But this town is amazing, the way the people have shown their support for each other, how strong they are, the faith that they have. It’s pretty amazing. For me to be able to be part of this group and help them out the best way I can, this is extremely important to me.”

Indeed, the guys who missed out on their day off were probably the lucky ones.

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