MARYSVILLE – A bus-pedestrian accident that left a student in critical condition Thursday has renewed calls for traffic safety improvements in front of Marysville-Pilchuck High School.
Michael O’Leary / The Herald
Keito Swan, 16, a junior and student leader, was struck by a school bus around 7 a.m. as he crossed 108th Street NE in the 5700 block near the school. He was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
It was dark, there was a light fog and the boy was wearing dark clothing when he crossed the two-lane county road, said Rich Niebusch, a Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.
Swan was crossing to the north side of the street toward the school when the westbound bus struck him, dragging him about 100 feet, Niebusch said. Speed was not a factor in the accident, he said.
“There were some headphones found at the scene that we know belong to him,” Niebusch said. “It’s unclear if he was wearing them at the time.”
Swan was in critical condition in Harborview’s intensive care unit Thursday night. He was being treated for multiple injuries, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg-Hanson said.
On a campus of 2,500 students, it didn’t take principal Tracy Suchan-Toothaker long to meet Swan. “He is just out and about,” she said.
Last year, Swan volunteered to decorate and help out at a prom for special-needs students. He is also a student government representative, active in the DECA student marketing club and has helped with practices for a baseball team of children with special needs.
Students and parents describe the stretch of 108th Street NE in front of the school as dangerous. Melanie Baird, who lives nearby, is frustrated more hasn’t been done.
She was driving her daughter, Courtney, to the high school and was two cars behind the bus when the accident occurred.
Baird was shaken, but not surprised. Last fall, she urged the school district to make safety improvements after she nearly struck a student on a dark, rainy morning, “missing him by inches.”
Baird said she was told the district was in discussions with the county, but there have been no improvements.
“Every day it’s like you take your life in your hands to get to school,” she said. “They are in total darkness for probably 70 percent of the school year trying to get across the road. To me, there is no excuse. “
Courtney Baird, 17, a senior, said crossing the street can be stressful.
“There are no lights, and there are no crosswalks anywhere, so you don’t know whether the cars see you or not,” she said.
School administrators and Snohomish County Department of Public Works officials have talked off and on about improving safety on 108th Street NE outside the school, county engineer Steve Thomsen said.
The county has reached agreements with other schools to install special traffic signals outside busy school entrances. But schools are expected to pick up all or part of that improvement, which would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said.
The last time the county and Marysville discussed the idea, school administrators said they’d have to find money in the budget first, he said.
Installing a crosswalk alone would only increase the danger, according to traffic studies, Thomsen said.
“We shy away from putting in crosswalks midblock or something other than a four-way stop because a young kid will see it and say, ‘Oh, this is safe,’” he said. “It often creates a worse situation without a controlled intersection there.”
The county does install special crossings for elementary schools that have formal crossing-guard programs, which include trained adults who help students cross streets. Middle and high schools typically don’t have such programs.
There are streetlights at Marysville-Pilchuck High School’s two entrances, Thomsen added.
The bus driver involved in Thursday’s accident has been transporting students in the Marysville School District since 1981 and has an “excellent record,” said Joe Legare, the district’s transportation director.
About 50 students were on the bus at the time of the accident. No one was injured, but they were able to talk to counselors. Parents were called, and some students went home for the day.
As part of district procedure, the driver was placed on paid administrative leave pending district and sheriff’s office accident investigations.
Other bus drivers met with a counselor and Marysville police chaplains afterward.
“Everybody at school was pretty sad,” said Joseph Carter, 17, a senior. “Everyone was trying to comfort one another. It’s just sad something like this happens.”
Dana Lutz lives across 108th Street NE from the high school. Despite being so near to a school, the road is remarkably dark, he said.
Lutz has to remind his 15-year-old son to walk down the street to a lighted stretch when he goes to school each morning.
“They really should have streetlights, and they should really patrol this a lot more,” he said.
Leeann Ketle-Lee, who also lives near the school, wishes the road were safer for pedestrians, whether through crosswalks or streetlights.
“In the last five years, this area has become so developed,” she said. “There are just so many more kids crossing the street.”
Herald writer Melissa Slager contributed to this report.
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