Sixteen members of Chicago's St. Ignatius College Prep junior varsity hockey team, along with their parents and two coaches, have filed a lawsuit after a semi-truck driver earlier this month slammed into the school bus they were riding in Northern Indiana.
According to officials, more than a dozen players were injured in the crash.
The driver, Victor Santos, a 58-year-old New York resident driving for a company out of New Jersey, has been charged with felony counts of causing serious bodily injury while operating a vehicle and criminal recklessness while armed with a deadly weapon, police said.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Kosciusko County, Indiana, names Santos as well as four trucking companies as defendants, and accuses them of "negligence and willful and wanton disregard for the safety of the players and coaches aboard the bus."
A total of 23 students, two coaches and a bus driver were on the bus at the time of the collision, which occurred at approximately 8:06 p.m. on Nov. 12. At least 16 people were taken to area hospitals. One of the was students was ejected from the bus by the force of the collision, officials said.
According to the lawsuit, several of the students who were injured are not well enough to return to class, and one student remains hospitalized.
Police said that two minutes prior to the collision, dispatchers had been notified of a semi-truck that was swerving between lanes, driving at excessive speeds and leaving the roadway as it entered Warsaw on U.S. 30.
Witnesses told police they had been following Santos’ truck back in Columbia City, about 20 miles away, and said he was traveling more than 90 mph at times.
According to officials, Santos briefly tapped the brakes of his truck as he approached an intersection, then barreled through a red light and knocked the school bus on its side.
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After striking the bus, Santos drove the bus a short distance down the roadway before coming to a rest in a nearby ditch.
When police approached the truck, they observed a strong odor of alcohol in the cab, and reported that the driver was exhibiting slurred speech. After failing field sobriety tests, Santos refused a breathalyzer test, and police obtained a search warrant to get blood samples at a local hospital. The test later revealed a blood alcohol level of .13% -- nearly twice the legal limit in Indiana, police reported.
According to lawyers for the suit, Santos has previously been charged in Indiana with failure to comply with federal motor carrier safety regulations, and failure to register under the unified carrier registration system.
