Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 6, 1995 TAG: 9506060149
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MELISSA DeVAUGHN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Last week, the 39-year-old school bus driver was charged with driving a load of children while under the influence of alcohol. No one, except perhaps the children on her bus who often complained she drove erratically and had a short temper, can explain why it happened.
Wilson was to be arraigned Monday morning, but the arraignment was postponed until June 22 in Blacksburg, according to General District Court clerk Sue Scott.
"I tried to find out some information about her, but it's just one of those things where no one seemed to know her," Transportation Supervisor Jerry Mabry said Monday. "She evidently didn't participate in any driver functions or get-togethers and pretty much kept to herself."
Mabry, Hall's direct supervisor, was in his first official day on the job Thursday when he received word of a minor bus accident right outside Blacksburg Middle School. Wilson had rear-ended another bus.
"I was more worried about the rain than anything else," Mabry said. "We've got a lot of nonpaved secondary roads, and it was raining that day. I just never could've conceived of [a DUI charge] happening."
But when Blacksburg officer C.S. Jones investigated the incident, he suspected alcohol was involved.
After giving Wilson sobriety tests and searching the bus, the officer charged her with driving under the influence, transporting an alcoholic beverage on a school bus and possession of an alcoholic beverage on school grounds.
No one was injured in the accident.
Friday, the day after Wilson was arrested, parents whose children rode on her bus said they wished they had listened to their children, who often complained about Wilson's behavior.
But other than their children's complaints, none of them really knew much more about the driver.
"I never met her. I just heard what my kids told me about her, and it wasn't good," said Delia Proffitt last week. Proffitt's three children attend Kipps Elementary School and rode Wilson's bus No. 72 every day.
Gary McCoy, principal of Blacksburg Middle School, said he never had met Wilson and never had heard complaints about her.
The day of the accident, Jones said he found one unopened beer in a student's backpack on the bus and a second beer in Wilson's purse, which had been taken into the school by another student.
McCoy said the students did not voluntarily offer to hide the beers and will not be punished for their role in the incident.
"We're absolutely not going to do anything to the kids," McCoy said. "We'll probably never know exactly what happened, but we do know they're not in trouble."
Mabry's supervisor, Larry Schoff, didn't know Wilson, either. And neither did Schoff's supervisor, Assistant Superintendent John Martin, who said last week at a news conference that he wasn't aware of any previous complaints against the driver.
"Thursday night, [Schoff] came in and immediately pulled [Wilson's] record, and everything was clean," Mabry said. "In this position you don't really get to know the drivers, because they're working part-time. I learn more about them by what I hear on their radios than by seeing their faces."
by CNB