School bus tips over in Kane County, sends 10 to hospitals

• Reprints

Nine students and a bus driver were injured Friday morning when a school bus was involved in a crash in west suburban Kane County. | Courtesy NBC5

Updated: February 29, 2012 8:03AM

A school bus carrying a group of special-needs students went off the road and tipped onto its side Friday morning near the Kane County town of Big Rock, and nine students and the bus driver were taken to hospitals to be checked out, but no one was seriously injured, the Kane County sheriff’s department said.

The accident happened just after 8 a.m. as the students, from several school districts, were being bused to the Krejci Academy in Naperville.

The crash took place on Granart Road near Camp Dean Road just east of Big Rock as the students were on their way to school, forcing a long stretch of Granart Road to be closed for about three hours.

Sheriff’s Lt. Pat Gengler said the bus was eastbound on Granart Road when it left the roadway for an unknown reason in an area where the shoulder of the road is narrow and slants into a ditch.

The driver tried to adjust but couldn’t before the wheels of the bus went into the ditch, said Gengler. The bus tipped onto its side but didn’t completely roll over, he said.

All of the children in the bus were wearing seat belts, which probably kept them from being seriously injured, Gengler said. North American School Bus, which owns the bus, requires that everyone in its buses wear seat belts, according to Gengler.

He said passers-by helped get the children off the bus.

Six of the students were taken to Delnor Hospital in Geneva by a Hinckley-Big Rock School District bus, and the other three students and the bus driver were taken by ambulance to Provena Mercy Center in Aurora.

Krejci Academy serves about 130 students, ages 4 to 21, who have autism or other emotional, behavioral or developmental disabilities, according to its website. Students are referred to Krejci Academy by their home school district.

Krejci Academy serves students from more than 50 school districts across Kane, Kendall, DuPage, Will, Cook, DeKalb and Grundy counties.

The bus that tipped over Friday came from the Sandwich area, Gengler said.

Big Rock is in the southwest area of Kane County, west of Sugar Grove.