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Tinsel and Tutus @ Reynolds Performance Hall — 12/12/13
12/12 — The Conway Symphony Orchestra entertained with Christmas music, including highlights from The Nutcracker performed by the Arkansas Festival Ballet.
If speed, as has been alleged, is at the root of Monday's horrific bus crash that claimed the lives of five Woodmore Elementary School students, we can be certain of one thing. The accident was preventable.
Talley Road, on which the accident occurred, is a roller-coaster of small hills and gentle and sharp curves. The speed limit on the road is 30 mph.
If one is speeding up or down one of those hills near where the accident occurred and must turn the steering wheel in a gentle curve, speed and the turn have the potential to roll an estimated 25,000-pound bus. Investigators, including the National Transportation Safety Board, will determine what ultimately occurred, but speed and that portion of the road - about one-half mile from Brainerd Road - offer that possibility.
But while determining the cause of the crash may decide the culpability of bus driver Johnthony Walker, it won't bring back the five children, who may have been innocently chattering about where they were going to eat at Thanksgiving dinner, their art projects at school or the latest Beyoncé song before the bus began to swerve.
At the time, the bus held 37 Woodmore students in grades from kindergarten through fifth grade. In addition to the five who died, six were critically injured, six were admitted to hospitals but not critically injured, and 20 were treated and released by faithful first responders or local hospitals, according to police.
Walker, 24, a graduate of Brainerd High School (of which Woodmore is one of the feeder schools), was arrested hours after the accident and faces five counts of vehicular homicide, reckless endangerment and reckless driving, according to his arrest affidavit, which also says "the defendant was traveling at a high speed" and lost control of the bus. Walker, who was driving his regular route, could face additional charges, police said.
The driver, according to Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher, has no prior convictions in Hamilton County. He is the father of a 3-year-old son and worked two jobs, according to CNN.
Although condolences poured in from throughout the country late Monday, bus contractor Durham School Services, which employed Walker, did not post anything about the accident on its website until nearly noon Tuesday and did not respond Monday to multiple requests for comment from the Times Free Press.
Between 2005 and 2014, accidents involving what the government terms "school transportation vehicles" killed an average of 5.3 school-age children per year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Although an estimated 25 million children ride in school buses daily, Tuesday's tragedy immediately and heartbreakingly skewed that average.
No city should have to get used to innocent death, but Chattanooga had the experience of doing so only 16 months ago when five members of the military services were slain by a homegrown terrorist at the Naval Operations Center on Amnicola Highway.
On Monday, as in July 2015, Scenic City residents stood in line to donate blood and filled social media with sincerely felt pledges of prayers and support for the devastated families. By Tuesday morning, an account at the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga and GoFundMe accounts were being set up to help families of the bus crash victims, plush animals had been purchased for grieving students and counselors were on hand at schools for those who needed to talk.
Chattanooga is a loving, giving and compassionate city that thankfully doesn't see demographics when it comes to caring. While nothing can replace the lives lost, a preventable loss at that, we're thankful - on the day before Thanksgiving - that the families of the victims can be surrounded by such a supportive community.
