Site of fatal school bus accident attracted safety concerns
On school days, Pebble Rock Drive briefly turns into a madhouse.
For a short time each morning and afternoon, the sidewalk fills with children and their parents as cars idle along the curbs, waiting for the school bus to arrive.
The congestion gets so bad on this normally quiet residential street near Ann Road and U.S. Highway 95 that at least one parent complained to the Clark County School District about it.
Tracy Fillmore said she called the district's transportation office late last year because the busy bus stop at the cramped mouth of her neighborhood seemed like an accident waiting to happen.
"My concern just basically came true," she said.
On Friday afternoon, a school bus struck and killed an 11-year-old girl at the corner of Pebble Rock and Fall Cliff Road, the street where Fillmore and her family live.
She said Saturday that she didn't know the girl or her family, but she feels sick every time she thinks about it.
Fillmore said she could hear the bus driver sobbing from down the street when she got home from work several hours after the accident.
She said she gave the man a hug and her daughter gave him a stuffed animal to try to comfort him.
"He's definitely just beside himself," Fillmore said of the driver, who Las Vegas police identified as Leslie Rice. "He hugged me so hard he cracked my back."
Police said the bus had just dropped off a group of elementary school children on Ann Road at Pebble Rock Drive when it struck the girl while she was crossing the road.
The neighborhood was full of parents and other children who witnessed the accident at about 3:30 p.m.
The accident was still under investigation Saturday, but at least one witness said the driver had to steer around the parked cars of waiting parents as the bus prepared to make its regular loop through the neighborhood.
The Clark County School District said the bus was still carrying three students when the accident happened.
The district will send letters about the incident to parents on Monday. The district didn't identify the girl's school, but the closest campus is Allen Elementary School.
Fillmore said her children attend different public schools and don't use the stop at Pebble Rock and Ann.
She said she called the district because all the people and parked cars gathered at the entrance to the neighborhood at bus time seemed unsafe and made an already dicey turn out onto Ann Road even more dangerous.
She also questioned the safety of dropping school kids off on the side of a busy, five-lane road like Ann to find their way home.
The bus stop was not moved after her call to the district, and Fillmore noticed no change in the amount of congestion in the area.
"They said they would look into it, and that was basically it," she said.
A call to the school district was not returned Saturday.
In a written statement Friday, spokeswoman Amanda Fulkerson said the district would work with Las Vegas police as they continue their investigation.
Friday's accident marked the second time this school year that a student has been stuck by a bus operated by the Clark County School District.
On Nov. 3, a 16-year-old girl in a crosswalk was critically injured when she was hit by a bus and pinned under the vehicle's wheels.
Police in North Las Vegas, where the accident occurred, recommended misdemeanor charges against the driver.
The girl spent more than a week in the hospital but was expected to make a full recovery, a police spokeswoman said.
By early Saturday afternoon, a row of flowers and teddy bears lined the sidewalk at the corner of Pebble Rock and Fall Cliff, but the makeshift memorial was cleared away a few hours later, perhaps by someone who couldn't stand to see the stuffed animals get soaked by the rain.
At just before 5 p.m., a man and a little girl in a pickup stopped across the street from the crash site and hurried out into the downpour to hang a bow and some balloons on a nearby tree.
Then they climbed back into the pickup and sped off, the truck fishtailing slightly as it made the turn onto Ann Road.
Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.
