Ohio cops: Bus driver flees in crash that hurts 8-year-old boy

An 8-year-old boy riding his bike was critically injured in a hit-and-run crash involving a bus driver, Ohio authorities say.

The Stark County Sheriff’s Office said the 75-year-old bus driver was arrested following the Monday, Sept. 4, crash in Plain Township. He was reportedly operating a minibus labeled Stark County Educational Service Center.

A witness said the boy slammed into the bus, but the driver of the bus “did not stop and continued traveling,” according to a crash report. A woman who heard the crash said the driver continued down the road “at a high rate of speed,” police said.

“It was horrific,” Daniel Holdsworth, who lives in the area, told The Canton Repository. “They’re very lucky the child wasn’t killed.”

Holdsworth told the publication he ran door to door to find the boy’s mother. Deputies said the mother rode with her son to a hospital.

After being given a description of the vehicle that fled the scene, deputies found the driver at his home nearby. He told deputies he knew he struck a bike but claimed he did not know there was a rider on it, the sheriff’s office said.

The driver, who authorities said did not show signs of being intoxicated, said he did not stop because he didn’t want to lose his job, according to the sheriff.

“You heard a thud, you see a bicycle on the ground behind you and then you just keep going?” a deputy is heard saying in body cam footage obtained by WOIO. “You have reasonable expectations that somebody’s going to be seriously injured.”

Deputies said the child was in critical condition at the hospital but did not specify his injuries.

The bus driver was charged with failure to stop after an accident, court records show.

Plain Township is about 55 miles southeast of Cleveland.