One woman was killed and seven others were sent to the hospital when a pickup truck and a Gorham school bus collided head-on on New Portland Road in Gorham Friday (Jan. 20).
The accident occurred at approximately 10:30 a.m. Gorham Fire Chief Robert Lefebvre said at the scene that a woman, who was driving a red, four-door pickup, was killed. Lefebvre said a woman driving the bus and four Gorham High School students were taken to the hospital along with two passengers from the truck. No names of any of the victims have been released.
About an hour after the accident, a rescue worker said that all students were off the bus. Gorham High School Principal John Drisko accompanied the Gorham students to the hospital. Paul Kelly, Gorham School Department business manager, said on Friday afternoon that all four Gorham students have been released from the hospital. Kelly said the bus driver, who he declined to name, suffered a leg injury and she was still in a local hospital Friday afternoon.
The pickup was traveling towards Gorham and the bus was headed towards the intersection of New Portland, Bartlett and Lowell roads, near the Westbrook city line. Gorham police and state police are still investigating the cause of the accident.
Witnesses, who were visibly shaken at the scene, said that pickup driver appeared to drift across the center of the road into the path of the bus. Leanne Cooper, a nurse at the White Rock School in Gorham, was behind the pickup when the accident occurred. “All of a sudden, she was in the other lane,” Cooper said about the pickup driver.
Cooper said no one appeared to be speeding. “It was the scariest thing,” she said.
Cooper reported the accident on her cell phone. After reporting the accident, she looked in the windows of the pickup. “I saw the driver was unconscious,” she said.
Then Cooper boarded the bus. She said the bus driver was extremely upset. “She was hysterical,” Cooper said. “She was crying, terribly upset.”
Cooper said she thought the students were mostly OK, though she thought one had a broken nose. She said the students remained calm on the bus.
Another witness, Lucille Gammon of Buxton was also following the truck. “We were just driving along, nothing out of the ordinary,” she said. “The truck just drifted over. It hit hard.”
Gammon left her car and hurried to the pickup. “I jumped and ran to the car. She was motionless,” Gammon said about the pickup driver.
Gammon also looked through the windows of the bus doors into the school bus and then through the windshield, but she couldn’t see the bus driver. “I was pretty shocked,” Gammon said.
The students were being bussed to the Portland Arts and Technology High School. Cory Towle, a Gorham High School senior, was following the bus on the way to a friend’s house on New Portland Road. “It looked like the truck slid,” Towle said. “I know all these kids.”
Sharon Heisel was inside her home when the bus and pickup collided. “It was very loud. I thought a gun had gone off,” she said.
“My heart came up in my throat,” she said when she realized a school bus was involved.
Her son, Jeff Heisel, a Gorham graduate in 2004, was taking a shower. “I heard a screech of tires, a pop and steel rending,” he said.
Jeff Heisel and his mom directed traffic until rescue crews could get to the scene. “Mom and I were pulling them up to the top of the driveway so ambulances could get in,” he said.
The driver of a pickup truck died in this collision with a Gorham School bus at 10:35 a.m. today (Jan. 20) on New Portland Road in Gorham.
Rescue workers at the scene of a fatal accident in Gorham Jan. 20. One woman was killed and seven others hospitalized when a pickup truck collided with a Gorham school bus on New Portland Road.
Gorham Fire Chief Bob Lefebvre at the scene of a fatal accident on New Portland Road in Gorham Jan. 20.
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