SYDNEY, N.S. — The driver of a school bus that ran over and killed a student outside a high school in Sydney, N.S., last winter says he didn't know something had happened until someone banged on the door of his bus.
Donald MacLean told the trial of a 15-year-old boy charged with criminal negligence causing death that he had gone to Sydney Academy on Feb. 11 to pick up one handicapped student when he noticed a group of about six students standing on the sidewalk near the school.
MacLean said he passed them and then pulled over to the side of the road. That's when he was alerted that something had gone horribly wrong.
"Next thing I heard was a person knocking at the door, so I opened the door and he said to me you have just run over a kid," said an emotional MacLean.
"I couldn't believe it — I couldn't have because there was nobody in front of me. There was nothing there and I couldn't understand how something like that could happen."
MacLean said he got out of the bus and went to the back of the vehicle where he saw a person lying on the road.
"At that point I knew that he was deceased," he said.
Lyon Kengis, a paramedic who attended to the student minutes later, said the 18-year-old youth had suffered fatal head injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene by his partner.
Cape Breton Regional Police charged a boy, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, more than a week after the student's death.
The trial was shown video of the victim's body taken by a police forensic identification officer.
