Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2003 | 11:24 a.m.
A rookie bus driver for the Clark County School District has been taken off the job pending investigation after he collided head-on with a motorcycle on Monday, killing its rider.
School district officials said it was 22-year-old Marvin Mosely's first day on the job, and his school bus was carrying 45 children home from their first day of school when about 4 p.m. he turned left from Pecos Road onto Owens Avenue, directly into the path of an oncoming motorcycle.
Neither Mosely nor any of his passengers was hurt, but the 48-year-old male motorcyclist was pronounced dead at the scene after being thrown from his 2001 Harley-Davidson.
Richard Ennes, business manager for the Clark County School District, said Mosely was scheduled to meet with the district's legal office this morning to discuss the incident. Any disciplinary action on the part of the district, including suspension or firing, has yet to be determined, Ennes said.
The motorcylist's identity was withheld this morning pending notification of his family, according the coroner's office.
Metro Police said Mosely, a North Las Vegas resident, appears to be at fault for failing to yield the right of way. No criminal action has been taken pending further investigation by police. Detective Bill Redfairn said Mosely was tested for alcohol, but the results have not yet come back.
The children who had been riding the bus were taken to Ira J. Earl Elementary School on Van Buren Avenue and Marion Drive, where crisis team counselors were on hand to speak with them as they waited for their parents to arrive. Though none was injured, Clark County School District spokeswoman Pat Nelson said one suffered an asthma attack and another felt chest pains.
Magda Barragan, a fourth-grader at Sandy Miller Elementary Academy, who was on the bus when it wrecked, said the loud crash was scary, but that she felt better having friends on the bus to talk to while they waited to be let off.
School District Transportation Division spokeswoman Lleeann Love said students were kept on the bus for about 20 minutes while police gathered names and seating information. They were then transferred to another bus that took them to Ira J. Earl to be picked up by their parents.
Barragan was sitting on the front lawn of the school quietly doing her homework when her mother arrived. After hearing about the accident on television, Sandra Barragan said she was relieved to get a call from school district officials telling her Magda was all right.
For Magda and the other children on the bus, it was a nerve-wracking end to their first day at Sandy Miller, a new magnet school with a focus on international studies.
Trauma Intervention Program volunteer Madelaine Dayton said the children she worked with at Ira J. Earl seemed to be dealing reasonably well with the emotional trauma of the accident.
"I'd say there were half a dozen who were tearful," she said.
How she deals with such children "depends on what they see. You ask them how they feel, if there's something that bothers them ... and then you talk about it."
Dayton noted that "on the first day of school, chaos is typical ... but rarely a situation like this."
The bus had been on its way to Fay Herron Elementary School, Love said.
She added that the school district was conducting both an administrative and a legal investigation, in addition to the criminal investigation being carried out by Metro Police.
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