A truck and a Fairfax County Public Schools bus collided Wednesday evening at the intersection of Richmond Highway and Mohawk Lane in Woodlawn, sending two people to the hospital. No children were aboard the bus when the crash happened, and the road has since reopened to traffic.
Emergency crews were dispatched at around 4:56 p.m. to the intersection of Richmond Highway, also known as Route 1, and Mohawk Lane, according to ffxnow.com. The outlet reported that no children were on the school bus at the time of the crash, and that the truck involved was described as a white pickup on the emergency scanner.
The driver of the truck was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, per the same account from ffxnow.com. An adult female passenger on the bus was also transported to a hospital, but with non-life-threatening injuries, the outlet reported.
Conflicting Reports on Truck Driver's Condition
There is some discrepancy in how the crash has been characterized since. WJLA reported that the truck driver's injuries were later downgraded to non-life-threatening, according to police, a detail that conflicts with the initial life-threatening designation reported elsewhere. Both versions are included here because the timing and source of that downgrade have not been independently confirmed.
WJLA's account described the crash as involving a man and a woman injured in the collision between the truck and the school bus in the Mt. Vernon area of Fairfax County, attributing that location detail to Fairfax County police. The station also reported that Richmond Highway reopened after the crash and that Fairfax County crews cleaned up the scene. A photographer for 7News, Robert Washington, captured images of the aftermath, according to WJLA.
Not the First Bus Crash to Make Headlines Locally
School bus crashes have drawn scrutiny elsewhere in Virginia in recent weeks. WJLA also reported that two people were injured in a separate crash involving a school bus and a pickup truck in Fauquier County roughly three weeks earlier. And in a prior Fairfax County incident, a school bus collided with another vehicle and struck a Department of Motor Vehicles building, according to WJLA's reporting on that episode.
No further details on the cause of Wednesday's crash, or whether any citations were issued, have been released.
