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March 2008
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Students returned to classes at West Brook High School in Beaumont Thursday morning but this day was more different than anyone can remember. Two of their classmates, Alicia Bondura and Ashley Brown, are not here. The two teenagers were killed Wednesday when the bus they were riding in to a soccer tournament overturned in Devers, about sixty miles east of Houston. During morning announcements broadcast over an intercom at 7:45am, faculty member Ken Poston asked students to share a moment of silence in memory of the girls. Counselors and clergy are on campus, more than a dozen of them to console students and faculty. Beaumont ISD Superintendent Dr. Carrol Thomas said parents of other children on the soccer team came to West Brook Thursday morning to pick up belongings recovered from the wrecked bus. Thomas said counselors were also sent to other schools in the city where siblings of the victims attend to help those students. A reporter from the Beaumont CBS-TV affiliate, KFDM Channel 6, says some of the injured soccer team players have returned to campus. But perhaps the most emotion we heard Thursday morning came from West Brook's principal, Dr. Rodney Canvess. "Last night was the worst day of my career," he told reporters. "I can only imagine how the moms and dads feel of the young people who were on that bus." Cavness reiterated what Bondura's and Brown's friends told us Wednesday night, that the two victims were good kids. "They were both model students, very nice young ladies, well-liked and good students," the principal said. Cavness said counselors and clergy would likely be available on campus for at least two or three days. Right now, six students are still in the hospital. Five are at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont. Of them, one is critical and four are stable. Another student is in stable condition at Memorial Hermann Baptist Hospital in Beaumont. More information about the driver of the Sun Travel charter bus is unknown. Investigators say he was taken for routine blood tests following the accident. A woman who answered the phone at Sun Travel, the charter company which owned the bus that crashed, said the owner is not taking calls from media. |
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