DATE: Tuesday, November 4, 1997             TAG: 9711040249

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B12  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: SUSSEX                            LENGTH:   38 lines

MAN WHO DROVE TOUR BUS INTO RIVER FACES CHARGE

The man who drove a chartered bus loaded with children into the Nottoway River this summer, killing a member of a tour retracing slavery's underground railroad, will face reckless driving charges.

Donald M. Tolliver of Detroit was indicted Monday by a Sussex County grand jury, Commonwealth's Attorney J. David Chappell said. Tolliver could receive a maximum 12 months in jail or a $2,500 fine if convicted.

A court date has not been set, Chappell said.

Tolliver was driving a bus filled with children retracing the path of slavery's Underground Railroad when he crashed on the morning of July 29.

The accident killed Adisa Foluke, 25, of Detroit, one of the tour's chaperones. Nearly all the injured were treated at hospitals and released the same day.

Tolliver and two others were more seriously injured, and Tolliver had a hand and foot amputated at a Richmond hospital.

Foluke's mother, Anita Peek, said she had no opinion about the indictment when reached by telephone at the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in Detroit. Peek directs the institute.

``I just pray for his family, and I hope he prays for ours,'' she said.

Investigators who studied the crash said Tolliver had less than four hours' sleep in the 24 hours before the crash. A witness said Tolliver spent his rest period the day before the accident sightseeing in South Carolina with the 29 students and five chaperones.

The bus left no skid marks and there was no evidence of any attempt to correct its course. The first rescue workers on the scene found tour members sitting on the half-submerged bus or trying to escape from its windows.

Some members of the ``Pathways to Freedom'' tour, created by the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute, eventually finished the tour in Toronto, Canada. The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the crash.

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