A 14-year-old girl who attended Southern Nash High School died Tuesday morning after she was struck by a pickup truck while trying to board her school bus in Nash County. The crash happened around 6 a.m. along Bryant Road near Hoyt Road, and the student was taken to a hospital, where she died roughly two hours later.
According to CBS 17, a 2014 Chevy Silverado was traveling west on Bryant Road when it hit the student. Reports differ on the crash's precise location relative to the nearby town of Middlesex, with some accounts placing it north of town and others describing the student as standing in her own driveway to the south, so that detail remains unsettled. WITN reported that, per troopers, the child had been waiting for the bus at a home on a private drive along Bryant Road before she darted into the roadway.
Bus Lights Flashing, But Not the Stop Signal
Central to the crash is what the school bus was and was not displaying when the student tried to board. Per WRAL, the bus's amber lights were flashing, but its stop sign and red lights were not activated at the time of the crash. WITN reported that the driver pulled over immediately after striking the student, who was then taken to WakeMed Raleigh.
WRAL reported that at 8:01 a.m., the girl died at the hospital, a detail that places her death roughly two hours after the crash occurred just after 6 a.m. Officials have not identified the student publicly, and Nash County Public Schools asked that the family's privacy be respected, according to ABC11.
Conflicting Signals on Whether Charges Will Follow
Accounts of what happens next for the driver diverge sharply depending on which agency is asked. State troopers said no charges were expected in the case, and CBS 17 reported that none had been filed as of late Tuesday morning. But the same WRAL report quotes Nash County Sheriff Stone saying he anticipates charges for the driver, while noting that his office is not actually investigating the crash. The dossier does not resolve which account will ultimately prevail, and no final charging decision has been reported.
North Carolina law addresses exactly this kind of moment. An excerpt of North Carolina General Statute § 20-217 states that an approaching vehicle on the same street or highway must come to a full stop and remain stopped when a school bus displays its mechanical stop signal or flashing red lights and is stopped to receive or discharge passengers. The excerpt available does not establish how the statute applies to this particular crash, since the bus's stop arm and red lights reportedly were not on.
Echoes of a 2014 Case Involving a 7-Year-Old
In 2014, 7-year-old Baileigh Long was hit by a pickup while crossing the road to board her school bus on Swift Creek School Road, according to a WRAL archive report. In that earlier case, the bus's caution lights were on but its stop arm had not extended; Long was initially listed in serious condition and later upgraded to fair.
The gap between a bus's early warning lights and its full stop signal is a recognized blind spot in how these crashes are tracked nationally. The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center has noted that no data collection system exists to capture pedestrian crashes involving children walking to a bus stop or boarding one, even though roughly a third of K-12 students use a yellow school bus for part of their commute, according to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center. The organization has instead relied on compiling media reports of students struck, injured, or killed in these situations, a scan it says covered crashes through September 2021.
