Bus Drivers, Crossing Guards On Alert As School Year Begins

Somewhere out there is a driver who knows she hit a Spokane Valley teenager who had just climbed off the school bus.

The driver was never caught.

Christina Marcille, then 17, was lucky, that day in March 1994. She was knocked down, her wrist broken; but she walked away.

“They kept her pants for evidence. They had tire marks on them,” said Judy Marcille, Christina’s mother. “It could have been so much worse.”

Witnesses helped piece together some information about the accident. They thought the driver was a woman, and that the car carried a passenger as well. The driver stopped and got out of the car to see if Christina was injured, then climbed back in and drove away.

The Central Valley School District bus that Christina was riding was motionless and had its stop paddle extended when the accident took place.

“We tell our drivers three things: Check your mirrors, check your mirrors and check your mirrors,” said Doug Sanders, head of transportation for East Valley School District. “Don’t open that door until everything in sight is stopped. Because once they hit the ground, they’re oblivious of everything except going home.”

With schools opening next week across the Valley, officials urge that drivers slow down near schools. Law enforcement officers will patrol school areas more than usual.

That should help, but not solve, school crossing guards’ challenge: convincing motorists to slow down as they approach school crosswalks.

Colleen Warn will do anything to get a child home safely from Broadway Elementary, including turning around a youngster who starts walking in the wrong direction.

But she can’t get through to some drivers. The school zone, complete with crosswalk, traffic cones and orange-vested crossing guards, just doesn’t register with some folks.

“They just look at you dumbfounded when you’re standing in the street, like ‘What are you doing out here, lady?”’ Warn said. “We’re just lucky we haven’t been hit.”

Warn and the other crossing guards sometimes shake their flags in frustration at the worst offenders, she said.

“And once in a while we yell at them to slow down.” Crossing guards and bus drivers also take down license numbers and descriptions of offenders.

The Spokane County Sheriff’s Department checks crossing guards’ reports. The Washington State Patrol investigates traffic offenses reported by bus drivers. The most serious get a ticket, said Sgt. Chris Powell.

Warn and other crossing guards across the valley will have some help from law enforcement officers during the school year. They target school areas from time to time and will supply a radar reader board to citizens groups that request the use of one.

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