Photo from viewer Jeremy Lockett of bus/truck crash. @KRCR7 pic.twitter.com/ISF8DMm9U7
— Jennifer Scarborough (@KRCRScarborough) April 11, 2014
A student who survived the collision of a charter bus headed for Humboldt State University and a FedEx truck — a crash that killed 10 people — filed a negligence suit Monday in Los Angeles against the delivery giant and the bus company.
Through his guardian, Araceli Lopez, 17-year-old Bryant Blanco sued FedEx Corp. and Silverado Stages Inc., the operator of the bus. He seeks unspecified damages.
The suit alleges the FedEx driver drove negligently and that the charter bus did not have sufficient emergency exit procedures in place.
The Grant High School senior was one of dozens of Los Angeles-area students traveling in the charter bus to Humboldt State for a campus tour on April 10.
The bus was being driven north on the Golden State (5) Freeway in Glenn County when it was struck head on by a southbound FedEx truck that veered off the freeway, across a wide median and into oncoming traffic.
Five students and five adults died in the wreck and ensuing fire.
According to the complaint, Blanco was trapped inside the bus while it was on fire. He escaped, but suffered serious injuries, the suit states.
Media reports at the time stated that Blanco started the trip near the front of the bus, talking with Adrian Castro, one of the students who died. However, he moved to the second to last row during a rest stop and was there when the accident occurred, the media reports stated.
“I was asleep and I felt the bus brake and that’s what woke me up, because my forehead hit the seat in front of me,” Blanco was quoted as saying in the media reports. “A second later I just see the bus, I just feel the impact. Everyone starts flying around.”
Blanco said that many students were trying to leave the bus through the same emergency exit, the previous news reports stated.
“One of the students he was like, ‘Everybody get out, the bus is on fire it could blow. You never know if its going to blow,”‘ Blanco said, according to the media reports.
FedEx previously issued a statement extending condolences to the victims and their families and saying the company was “focused on providing support to those affected and cooperating with the authorities as they conduct their investigation.”
— City News Service