A driver crossed into oncoming traffic, setting off a chain-reaction accident that sent a school bus carrying students from the Maryland School for the Blind crashing into a Parkville pharmacy Tuesday afternoon, according to Baltimore County Police.
Police said someone driving a 2017 Ford Focus was heading south on Harford Road when they crossed into the northbound lane, cutting into the path of the bus.
It’s unclear whether the Focus struck the bus, but police said the Focus hit a 2014 Nissan Altima. The bus veered off the road, going through the storefront of a pharmacy in the 8700 block of Harford Road.
Two adults and one child suffered minor injuries in the crash. The bus driver, another adult and a child riding the bus were hospitalized. Two children from the bus and eight other individuals were treated at the scene and refused to go to a hospital.
Kylee Michael, a 20-year-old from Perry Hall who was a passenger in the Altima, said that she and her friend were sitting at a red light when they felt their vehicle get hit multiple times, “like a pileup,” by a black sedan.
After Michael got out of the car, the woman who said she had been driving the black sedan ran up to her wearing only one shoe and asked to borrow Michael’s phone to call her fiancé, Michael said.
Michael let the woman use her phone.
“You’ve got to come here — I just got into a really bad car accident. I hit a bus head-on,” Michael heard the woman say on the phone.
The school bus, owned by Baltimore County Public Schools, was being used by the Maryland School for the Blind. It remains unclear where the bus was headed or where it was coming from. Both the School for the Blind and Baltimore County Public Schools declined to comment on the incident.
The crash remains under investigation by the Baltimore County Police Department’s crash team.
By Wednesday afternoon, the pharmacy had been boarded up to cover up a bus-sized hole. Inside, workers could be seen clearing debris and making repairs. The one storefront window unharmed by the collision had an orange warning posted on it. “DANGER” it read in all caps. “This building is unsafe.”
Carrie Shelley, 41, who works at Enchanted Cakes and Treats next to the pharmacy, said there have been many accidents along Harford Road.
One of the worst of the accidents she recalled was when someone plowed through the crab shop on the corner and pinned a worker to the wall, killing the woman, she said.
After seeing years of debris, collisions and carnage on the avenue, Tuesday’s crash has left her feeling anxious, she said.
After two loud booms Tuesday, she said her brain immediately registered the “crunching sounds” of a car accident and the whole building shook. When she saw the school bus in the building next door, she ran to the back of the bakery to get tourniquets from a trauma response kit to help anyone who might have needed them.
At the back of the bus she saw a young boy, shaking with fear.
“That’s an image that doesn’t leave you,” she said.
This story has been updated.
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