By Debby Woodin

dwoodin@joplinglobe.com

WYANDOTTE, Okla. — An eighth-grade girl who was dragged by a school bus after her backpack got stuck in the door said Friday she did not think she was going to survive the ordeal.

“I seriously thought I was going to die,” said Sydney Pierce, 15, a junior-high school pupil at Wyandotte. “My life just went right by my eyes.”

She was injured Wednesday afternoon when a school bus dragged her about 300 feet down East 140th Road in Ottawa County and ran over her right leg.

Her mother, Rhonda Pierce, said she does not blame the bus driver for the girl’s injuries. She said the bus driver was using his cell phone to call a supervisor to find out if Wednesday’s rains had flooded a low-water bridge on the road and also was distracted by a fight that broke out on the bus between some other pupils.

“I feel her guardian angel was with her,” said the mother. She said her daughter suffered soft-tissue injuries — bruises and abrasions — to most of her body and especially her leg, but had no severe head injury or broken bones.

“Everything’s fixable,” the mother said.

While family members aren’t angry with the bus driver, they are frustrated with school district officials, who they said didn’t come to the hospital or check with the family until Friday morning. The mother said the district superintendent called Friday morning and said that the school district would pay her daughter’s medical bills.

The superintendent, Troy Gray, issued a written statement Friday but declined to answer questions beyond that, saying that he is not “trying to hide anything” but that he must protect the rights of those involved while an investigation is being conducted by the district. Neither the district nor the family would identify the bus driver.

“As a district and community, we are undoubtedly concerned with the well-being of the student, her family, and the extent of the injuries sustained,” the superintendent’s statement says in part. “A full investigation is under way to identify the events and factors that led to this unfortunate accident. Due to the privacy rights of the individuals involved, we are unable to release any further information at this time.”

The girl said her backpack got stuck in the bus doors while the bus driver was talking on his cell phone and did not notice her predicament. She said it was the first time she saw the bus driver talk on a cell phone. The incident happened on the road in front of her home.

“I knew I was going to be dragged because I could not get my arm out of the strap,” the girl said.

She tried to run alongside the bus at first but couldn’t keep up as the bus accelerated and then the backpack strap broke, dropping her to the ground. She said she tried to roll her body into a ball to protect herself, but didn’t get the right leg pulled up in time and the rear wheels ran over that leg.

“The waffle print of the tire is still on her knee,” Sydney’s mother said Friday.

Sidney was left behind in the muddy road unable to move and in excruciating pain while the bus continued on dropping off a couple of neighbor children. The bus has to turn around and come back past her house, the mother said. During that return trip, the bus driver saw her belongings scattered in the road and then saw her lying there, her mother said.

Her mother heard the family’s dogs barking and went to see why when she noticed something lying in the road. When Rhonda Pierce realized it was her daughter, she rushed to her to hold her.

As they waited in the muddy road for an ambulance to arrive, “She wanted me to sing the song ‘Dead Puppies’ to her to distract her from the pain, but I didn’t know the song ‘Dead Puppies,’” the mother said. “I told her I would sing ‘White Christmas’ to her like I did when she was a baby. I tried, but I don’t sing very well.”

The mother said she resisted crying in front of her daughter but told Sydney that she would need to go have a good cry later in private.

The teenager was taken to Integris Baptist Regional Health Center in Miami. The hospital wanted to keep the girl overnight but both the girl’s mother and father, Martin J. Pierce, are registered nurses. The girl wanted to go home, and they felt they could care for her at home, the mother said.

Rhonda Pierce said the bus driver stayed at the hospital with the family and has been checking on the girl since.

“I don’t want this driver crucified because we are all inattentive at times,” she said. “He just got unlucky and something bad happened.”





Girl convalescing

On Friday, Sydney Pierce was sore and being treated with pain medication. She was getting around to a degree on crutches, mother Rhonda Pierce said, and had an appointment with an orthopedic doctor to double-check the injuries.