RHINELANDER, WI (WJFW/CNN) – Wisconsin police are looking for a driver who nearly hit a child as she was getting on a stopped school bus.
The incident left the bus driver in disbelief.
“That car … just missed you,” she said on a surveillance video recorded from inside the bus. “That truck … just missed her.”
The video shows the truck using the right-hand shoulder of the highway to get around the stopped bus. The child appeared inside just a moment after the vehicle passed through.
"My heart dropped," Bowens Bus Service manager Kim Weyers said. "It was maybe a second away from being the ultimate tragedy."
She called the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office about the incident.
"It was an oh-my-goodness moment. It took my breath away. I was shocked," Capt. Tyler Young with the sheriff's office said. "To me, that's a 911 call. We almost lost a child's life."
The bus driver couldn’t get a license plate to identify the driver and no one called police at the time it happened.
“It’s hard to follow up on this right now,” Young said. “This is where we as a community have to be aware of this. We have to work together."
Weyers said it’s common for drivers to ignore the law when it comes to school buses.
"There's rarely a day that goes by that I don't have one of my drivers saying somebody ran their red light," she said.
So far this school year, the school bus company has reported 19 incidents to police.
What it doesn’t include is all the times a bus driver can’t catch a license plate number.
"Upon availability of deputies, they'll be more close observations of what's happening around our school buses in Oneida County," Young said.
Weyers wants drivers to keep one thing in mind when they rush to pass a school bus.
"Nothing is more important than these little lives," she said.
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