Driver of school bus in fatal crash may have fallen asleep


CALGARY — the driver of a private school bus told a police official she may have fallen asleep at the wheel before an Oct. 17, 2007, crash in which Kathelynn Occena, a nine-year-old passenger, died.

City police Const. Robert Pughe testified at the start of a fatal accident inquiry on Monday that Louise Rogers told him shortly after the crash on Crowchild Trail, a major Calgary artery, that she actually didn't know what happened.

She admitted she could have fallen asleep. That was about it. She was very distress, Pughe told Alberta Solicitor General counsel Christine Nugent.

When she was told of the death of the child, she became very distressed . Almost suicidal. She told us to take her and bring back the child.

The police officer said Rogers also admitted to have been using her iPod that morning.

He made a decision to transport Rogers to Foothills Hospital, where she spent two weeks in a psychiatric ward with desperate thoughts.

Rogers, 42, was driving a school bus for Third Academy global when it careered off the road and struck the rear left corner of a broken-down gravel truck, then veered off and struck a glow standard.

Under cross-examination by Frank Tosto, legal representative for Third Academy and Rogers, Pughe said mechanical tests showed the truck was in very poor automatic condition at the time. However, it was more than a half-metre on to the shoulder lane, courtyard was told.

Kathelynn Occena succumbed to her injuries and her younger sister Julia, then seven, was one of three children gravely hurt in the crash.

Pughe said although two of the children on the bus testified that Rogers was using a cellphone at the time of the crash, there was no evidence that either of the phones in her cab were being used in the moments earlier.

Const. Kenneth Reed, a city police crash analyst, told court there was no evidence of any pre-collision braking by the bus and no clarification of its cause.

The Occena family, along with the family of a boy who was injured in the collide, have sued Third Academy.


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