3 injured when bus carrying Maryland School for the Blind students hits Parkville building

One child and two adults had minor injuries after a school bus carrying Maryland School for the Blind students crashed into a building in Parkville on Tuesday afternoon, officials said.

Baltimore County Police said on social media that the crash happened on Harford Road, which was shut down after the collision, near Taylor Avenue.

The bus driver and a child from the bus were taken to the hospital, as was another adult who was “on location,” said Travis Francis, a spokesperson for the Baltimore County Fire Department.

Two other children from the bus and eight other individuals were treated at the scene and refused transport, Francis said.

At least one other vehicle was involved in the crash.

The crash comes 10 days after a Maryland Transit Administration bus hurtled down a busy street in Pikesville and slammed into a FedEx store, injuring more than 30 people.

The school bus is part of the Baltimore County Public Schools’ fleet, said Gboyinde Onijala, a spokesperson for the county school system.

It was carrying students from the Maryland School for the Blind, said Marlo Jacobson, the school’s director of advancement. There is an administrator on site to support students and communicate with families, she added.

Three students and two adults were on the bus at the time of the crash, Francis said.

Carrie Shelley, 41, was in the back of Enchanted Cakes and Treats bakery when she heard a loud boom and felt the whole building shake.

She ran outside and saw that a yellow school bus had driven through the windows of the neighboring building. A woman stepped out of a black sedan, who Shelley said was “hysterical.”

When she saw there were kids on the bus, Shelley ran back into her bakery and asked an employee to call 911. She then ran out to help the children get out of the bus.

“One kid, who was the first one that jumped out, was just at the door, like, terrified. Nothing but fear,” she said. “So a bunch of us helped him out and had him on the steps.”

Passersby helped the two other middle school-aged children, including one in a wheelchair, off of the bus, then waited for the ambulances to arrive.

Shelley said Harford Road and the intersection nearby were dangerous. She said she had seen other accidents there over the course of six years, from people speeding to some attempting to make U-turns.

Another person working near the crash site, Emily Dolch, said the “whole building shook.” Dolch, who works at Lovejoy’s Market, said some people thought it was an earthquake at first. Dolch said she heard from others that the school bus was potentially run off the road by another vehicle.

Kylee Michael, a 20-year-old from Perry Hall, said that she and her friend were sitting at a red light in a white sedan when they felt their vehicle get hit multiple times, “like a pileup,” by a black sedan.

There were multiple children with disabilities on the school bus, Michael said. When she got out of the car, a woman who said she had been driving the black sedan ran up to her wearing only one shoe and asked to use Michael’s phone to call her fiancé because she couldn’t find her phone, 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,” she heard the woman say on the phone.

The Maryland School for the Blind, which is not part of the county school system, is situated in Northeast Baltimore but educates over 200 students with visual disabilities from around the state. Many have multiple disabilities and some use wheelchairs and canes to get around the 96-acre campus. It’s a publicly funded nonpublic school, part of a group of programs that primarily teach kids with special needs.

Banner reporters Maya Lora and Kristen Griffith contributed to this story.

This story will be updated.

Correction: This story has been corrected to say that Harford Road, not Taylor Avenue, was shut down.