Police: School bus driver drove kids while drunk

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Kolleen M. Lampa

Updated: March 5, 2012 8:07AM

A Northwest Indiana school bus driver was drunk when she drove 44 elementary school students on a field trip, police said.

Kolleen M. Lampa, 44, of Portage, is facing felony charges of drunken driving while operating a vehicle with children in it and neglect of a dependent for driving drunk with children on her bus, Portage police Sgt. Keith Hughes said. She is also facing lesser charges related to drunken driving.

Portage Township Schools Supt. Michael Berta suspended Lampa and said he’ll recommend she be fired.

“We have zero tolerance on any alcohol use, particularly someone who’s operating a vehicle,” he said.

Officials said Lampa was dropping the children from Myers Elementary School off for their field trip to Portage High School when she got into an argument over parking with another bus driver at 9:18 a.m. Thursday. The other driver said Lampa was acting erratically and had a strong odor of alcohol on her breath, so she called the district’s transportation director, David Harman, to alert him.

She said she had to stop Lampa from getting back into her bus, officials said.

When Harman arrived he also smelled the alcohol on Lampa’s breath, but she told him she hadn’t been drinking. She later said she drank a glass of wine with dinner, officials said.

Harman said he took Lampa to a medical center to be tested for intoxication. She provided two samples — the first at 10:30 a.m. showed a blood alcohol level of 0.139 percent. The second at 10:54 a.m. showed 0.129 percent, authorities said.

Police were called to the district transportation building at 11:14 a.m., and they took Lampa to the police station, where she had trouble with field sobriety tests, police said.

After a blood alcohol test by police at 12:09 p.m. showed her level at .09 percent, she was arrested, police said.

Lampa, who’s worked as a Portage bus driver for five years, is free on bond.