UPDATED: 17 children taken to hospital after wreck involving school bus

REELSBORO — Seventeen school children were treated at a hospital Wednesday after a truck driver with no operator’s license plowed into the rear of a stopped school bus on N.C. 55.

Twenty-seven children were aboard the Pamlico County school bus as it stopped near Chair Road to pick up a student at 7:19 a.m. Nine were transported by ambulance and one in a private car to New Bern to be seen at CarolinaEast Medical Center soon after the incident. More parents brought their children to the hospital for a check up later, said Megan McGarvey, CarolinaEast’s public information officer.

“I expect them to be sore,” she said.

N.C. Highway Patrol trooper R.C. Riley said the trucker, driving a two-axle box truck, sub-contracted to haul U.S. mail, was driving around a curve east on N.C. 55 when he was unable to stop.

Truck driver, Sidney Roundtree, 62, of Grifton, also was taken to the hospital. Riley said along with having no operator’s license, he is charged with failure to reduce speed. The truck is owned by Gardner’s Carrier Service in Grifton. No one answered the phone at the company.

A Pamlico woman, waiting for her 12-year-old daughter at CarolinaEast Medical Center emergency department, said she lived a quarter of a mile from the crash scene.

“My 13-year-old son was on the bus, he is very close to his sister. He called me and told me the bus had been hit by a big semi. I told him to stopped playing, then I realized it was all real,” she said.

The woman, who said she did not want to give her name, went to the wreck scene, and got on the bus. “Some of the children were crying but most were anxious and on cell phones. My daughter was in tears,” she said.

Her son, who was taken on to school, called his mom’s cell phone to check on his sister. “He is going to get in trouble for calling, but he is close to his sister,” she said.

The bus was driven by Anita Harvill, 47. She was driving bus No. 104 with high school and middle school students.

Roundtree is a diabetic, but Riley said that was not a contributing factor in the crash.

The speed limit is 55 miles per hour. Riley said high speed was not a contributing factor in the wreck.

Francine Sawyer can be reached at 252-635-5671 or at fsawyer@freedomenc.com