SEDGWICK, Maine — A Sedgwick Elementary School seventh-grader was injured Friday morning when she was struck by a car while trying to cross the road to get onto a school bus, according to the Maine State Police.
The school bus was headed north on Snow’s Cove Road, also known as Route 15, and had slowed down with its yellow lights flashing to pick up the 12-year-old Sedgwick girl, Maine Department of Public Safety Spokesman Stephen McCausland said Friday afternoon.
“The student was not standing outside, so the bus pulled over to the side of the road and shut its lights off to allow traffic to go by it,” he wrote in an email to the BDN.
John Hawkins, 64, of Rockland, heading north in a 2006 Chrysler minivan, was among the vehicles passing the school bus.
“The student ran out into the road to get on the bus, thinking the bus was stopped for her,” McCausland wrote. “The student was struck by the vehicle that Hawkins was driving.”
The unidentified girl was taken to Blue Hill Hospital to be treated for injuries that were not considered life-threatening. Speed was not a factor in the accident, and no charges are expected, McCausland said.
Mark Jenkins, the superintendent of School Union 76, said that students on the bus likely witnessed the accident and its aftermath, so the school community was working to help them work through what they saw. The rural elementary school serves about 100 children from kindergarten through eighth grade.
“A number of students on that bus needed to speak to our counselors and were able to do so,” a Sedgwick Elementary School official wrote on the school’s Facebook page. “Currently, we have a half-dozen counselors on site working with students.”
Jenkins, who said that he did not witness the accident, reported that traffic in the area was backed up while first responders and police attended to the girl.