A bus driver whose vehicle crashed yesterday as he was bringing up to 40 children home from school has died.<\/p>\n
The PSNI said the driver of the bus, which left the Tullyah Road near the village of Belleeks in Co Armagh, died at the scene.<\/p>\n
St Paul’s High School Bessbrook said its pupils had been on the bus, which ended up in a ditch, but that none had been injured.<\/p>\n
The bus company, which is based near Newry, also confirmed their colleague had died.<\/p>\n
“Despite immediate emergency response, our dear colleague sadly passed away,” Quinn Coaches posted on social media.<\/p>\n
“Our first thoughts are with his family, friends, and fellow colleagues during this incredibly difficult time.<\/p>\n
“He was a respected and experienced member of our team, and he will be greatly missed.”<\/p>\n
St Paul’s High School principal D\u00e1ith\u00ed Murray said in a letter to families: “We appreciate that this will have caused a significant shock to pupils who experienced the incident.”<\/p>\n
Mr Murray added that members of the Education Authority’s Critical Incident Response Team will be at the school today “to support pupils affected by the incident”.<\/p>\n
He encouraged pupils “if they feel well enough” to attend school and that “staff will signpost them to the support services available”.<\/p>\n
Mr Murray added: “The thoughts and prayers of the St Paul’s community are extended to everyone affected by this serious incident.”<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Education Authority confirmed the incident involved a school bus operated by a privately contracted provider and said: “Our thoughts go out to all of those impacted by the incident.”<\/p>\n
Additional reporting PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bus driver whose vehicle crashed yesterday as he was bringing up to 40 children home from school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-304056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}