Police said Tuesday that they planned to ticket a driver who lost control of her school bus and fell from the vehicle as she transported two North Chicago boys to classes in Mundelein.
Diana Wallace, 36, of Antioch will be cited with failure to wear a safety belt in connection with a bizarre accident that occurred about 7:40 a.m. Monday on Illinois Highway 137 near the Tri-State Tollway, Lake County Sheriff’s Lt. Fred Heidecke said. Heidecke said the ticket will be issued when Wallace recovers from injuries suffered in the accident.
Wallace was driving her 16-passenger school bus, with the two students on board, just east of the tollway overpass, when she began to cough uncontrollably, police said. The bus struck a guardrail and Wallace was ejected from her seat and through the passenger loading door onto the roadway. She tumbled and slid some 50 feet before coming to rest against a curb.
The two students on the bus, 11-year-old Jessie Brown and a 9-year-old boy who school officials declined to identify, jumped from the bus before it rolled across three lanes of rush-hour traffic and down an embankment, police said.
The boys were treated at Provena-St. Therese Medical Center in Waukegan and released, authorities said.
Wallace was in guarded condition Tuesday at Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, a hospital official said.
Heidecke said toxicology tests performed at the hospital indicate that neither drugs nor alcohol were a factor in the accident.