Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Empty school bus crashes into patio wall at Irish pub; driver injured

School Bus Crash at Pub

Leila Navidi

The scene of a school bus crash where only the driver was onboard the bus when it crashed outside of McMullan’s Irish Pub on Tropicana Avenue west of the Orleans on Thursday, November 8, 2012.

Updated Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012 | 12:09 p.m.

School bus crash at McMullen's Irish Pub patio

A school bus with only the driver onboard crashed Thursday morning into a patio wall at an Irish pub, Metro Police officials said.

The bus was making a left turn onto Cameron Street around 9:15 a.m. when it crashed into a sedan. Police said the bus driver then hit the gas instead of the brakes and sped into the concrete wall outside McMullan’s Irish Pub, 4650 West Tropicana Ave., just east of Tropicana and South Decatur Boulevard.

Bartender Mary Bligh said she was walking into the pub from the back door when she heard a loud bang.

At first, she thought there had been an explosion, she said. Fire trucks were at the pub earlier in the morning for a garbage fire, and she thought maybe a truck had exploded, she said.

Then she heard somebody in the patio area fronting Cameron Street scream, she said. She ran outside and saw a yellow school bus that had smashed into the patio barrier, she said.

The female bus driver was taken to University Medical Center, but police said she was not in critical condition. The driver of the sedan sustained minor injuries and did not need to be transported to the hospital. None of the six people in the pub at the time were injured, Bligh said.

“People were shocked,” she said. “Everybody was shaken by it. We’re just concerned that the lady is OK.”

Clark County School District spokeswoman Melinda Malone confirmed that a district bus was involved. The driver was headed to the Arville Bus Yard after dropping off students at Batterman Elementary School, she said.

Police said the bus crashed with the sedan after one of the drivers failed to yield. School District transportation investigators also are looking into the incident, Malone said.

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