At about 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the OPP in Lennox and Addington County were called to a single vehicle school bus crash on Hwy. 2 in Odessa, near Fairbanks Street.
The school bus, with a male driver and female passenger onboard, had collided head on into a hydro pole.
“Thankfully, there were no children on the bus,” says OPP Const. Shannon Cork. “There was the bus driver, who was subsequently charged for an unsafe lane movement.”
The driver has been identified as 36-year-old Gregory Beauchesne, from Verona.
“And he had a monitor (passenger) on the bus as well, but there were no injuries,” Cork added.
Both lanes of the highway were closed to traffic.
“We do have to shut the road down because the bus collided with a hydro pole that had high tension wires on it,” says Cork, “and in order to do those repairs safely, Hydro has to shut down hydro and then they have to fix the pole.”
According to Hydro One, less than a handful of customers were impacted by a power outage during the repair work.
According to the OPP, the school bus was travelling westbound on Hwy. 2 where it appears the driver lost control of the bus when the vehicle hit the gravel shoulder, veering into the ditch and striking the hydro pole. The pole was sheared off at the bottom and moved several feet forward.
Sean Payne, owner and operator of Martin’s Bus Line, confirmed to Global News that the bus involved was one of their buses. He said as per company policy they will be temporarily pulling the driver from his route.
Payne also said the company will be conducting their own investigation, to determine whether the driver needs additional training.
Witnesses at the scene told Global News, they saw someone removing the company logo off one side of the bus and using spray paint to cover the name on other side.
With files from Mark Ladan