Dangerous clip hurts girl
School buses, as they come off the assembly line, are generally very safe.
But a change made to dozens of school busses in Caldwell led to a serious gash in the forehead of a little girl.
Her mom, Rashell Sanchez, contacted on your side to warn other parents and see if fox 9 could help fix the problem.
Little Frankie Rose Sanchez is 6 years old and was just getting used to riding the bus when....
"She fell asleep, the driver slammed on the brakes and frankie flew forward."
"It cut her head open, a deep cut"
A clip used to secure a broom in the front seat missed Frankie's eye by just two inches.
"My concern is that the buses are unsafe."
Sanchez expressed her concerns to Frankie's principal at vision charter who took action.
"If I uncover any situation that's unsafe, I want to immediately fix that." says Wendy Oldenkamp, "I expect that to be remedied immediately."
Oldenkamp called the Caldwell Transportation company and they fixed Vision Charter school's five buses.
"I'm grateful they did it on my daughter's bus, but I feel bad that they didn't do the same for all other children." says Sanchez.
Caldwell Transportation buses are used throughout the district and bus officials told Rashell they'd work on removing the rest of the clips.
But On Your Side didn't talk to Rashell until a month after the accident happened. That very day, we went out and took pictures of Caldwell Transportation buses and there were many that still had brooms attached. So we called the insurance company for Caldwell Transportation and told them we were doing a story on this and the next day, the president of Caldwell Transportation called us to say they're taking care of the broom problem."
Sure enough almost every broom was gone, almost.
"I feel if they can fix my daughter's bus, they can have time to fix all buses over a month now and should had adequate time to have it taken care of." says Sanchez, "I think they'd still be up today if you hadn't called."
The president of Caldwell Transportation wouldn't go on camera.
He did tell me there hadn't been an accident with the clips in the 30 years since they'd been installed.
Still, he says the brooms have been moved to the back of the bus and clips removed.










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