HAYS COUNTY, Texas — The Hays Consolidated Independent School District confirmed the identity of the young victim in last Friday's devastating bus collision. Five-year-old Ulises Rodriguez Montoya was the single fatality among the bus passengers when a concrete truck veered into their lane and collided with them head-on. The tragic incident unfolded on State Highway 21 near the Bastrop-Caldwell county line, as reported by KXAN.
The vibrant young boy, a pre-K student at Tom Green Elementary School, was traveling back with his classmates from a field trip to the Capital of Texas Zoo. Loved for his passion for dinosaurs and the color green, Ulises also cherished storytelling, as Naira (Dina) Solís Shears, his pre-K bilingual teacher, in a statement obtained by KXAN, "Ulises was a child who was filled with a lot of happiness, and he often shared it with others," said Shears. "He had a talent for drawing and his favorite thing to draw was dinosaurs. He could almost completely spell the word dinosaur, which demonstrates how smart he was. He always had a dinosaur drawn on all of the assignments he turned in. He liked to tell stories and shared many with his friends and family. Above all — he was a loving child."
Following the accident, the school district canceled classes on Monday to provide time for mourning and healing, offering counseling to students and staff between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. According to CBS Austin, a second victim, an adult driving a car following the bus, also lost their life in the crash.
Community support for the family of Ulises has poured in, with a memorial set up at the school featuring flowers and stuffed toys. A GoFundMe page, as mentioned in CBS Austin's coverage, was created to support the family in funeral expenses and has raised considerable funds toward its $100,000 goal. As they grapple with this loss, Ulises leaves behind a host of family members including his parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
