A kindergarten students was fatally struck by a school bus on his first day back from the holiday break.
The four-year-old boy was hit in the parking lot of Silver Spring Intermediate School in the village of Lisbon, Wisconsin, just after 8.30am on Thursday, according to the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department.
He was at the intermediate school to transfer to a shuttle bus for Willow Springs Learning Center, the sheriff’s department wrote on Facebook.
The bus was carrying other students when it struck the boy. The driver is cooperating with an investigation into the cause of the incident. It was not immediately known if the driver was arrested.
‘Our thoughts are with the student’s family, friends, and the entire community during this heartbreaking time,’ stated sheriff’s department Lieutenant Nicholas Wenzel.
A Willow Springs parent, Waleed Edoud, said the bus transfer happens every morning ‘which we hate by the way’. He said a chaperone has facilitated it.
‘I don’t know what happened but during the transfer, my son said the kid that’s behind him got hit by the bus and it just missed him,’ Edoud told WISN 12 News.
The bus company, Dairyland-Hamilton, stated that it is fully cooperating with authorities in the investigation.
‘We offer our deepest condolences to the student’s family, friends, and the Hamilton School community,’ a spokesperson for the company told the news outlet.
The bus company’s Facebook page states: ‘Dairyland-Hamilton is a proud member of the STA Family of Companies, the nation’s safest independent provider of school bus transportation services, with an industry-leading safety rating and a family-oriented business plan.’
A prayer vigil for the student, who has not been identified, is being held at Christ Our Savior Lutheran Church in Sussex on Friday evening.
The boy was killed just over three years after a six-year-old first grader was fatally hit by a school bus on the last day of classes before the Christmas break in Missouri. The boy crossed in front of a school bus in the Oakland Mobile Home Park neighborhood when the vehicle carrying other students struck him.
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