James Caldwell looked down at his 8-year-old son Wyatt on Sunday night and breathed a sigh of relief.
“It took that long for the realization of everything to set in,” said Caldwell, 34, a landscaper from Pittsgrove in Salem County. “Everything didn’t seem real until I was lying there holding him. I thought, wow, I could have been sitting here not doing this. It could have been so different.”
Wyatt was sitting in the front seat on the passenger side of Bus No. 33 on Friday afternoon when an SUV swerved into the path on a two-lane road. Denise Powell, 60, the bus driver, who had also worked in the Olivet Elementary School Cafeteria for the past two decades, died after the violent wreck.
Two arms lengths away, Wyatt escaped with cuts from broken glass. Only two of the other 18 children on the bus suffered minor injuries.
The driver of the Nissan Murano SUV, Pearl Caudill, 70, of Pittsgrove, was pronounced dead at the scene.
“If she had panicked, I could have lost my son,” Caldwell told NJ Advance Media on Wednesday. “My kids mean everything to me. All it would have taken was for Miss Denise to jerk the wheel a little to the left and that SUV would have been in my son’s lap. In my opinion, she’s a hero for the children.”
The bus, driving eastbound on Route 540 in Pittsgrove Township, was hit by a Nissan Murano that authorities say had drifted across the center line. That impact caused the bus and the SUV to strike a Volkswagen Jetta, and all three vehicles went off the side of the road, according to a news release from the state police.
Caldwell said he arrived moments after the wreck. He said he was waiting for his son at a nearby bus stop when a friend told him about the crash. He rushed there on his motorcycle. He said when he saw the No. 33 on the bus his heart sank.
He felt a sense of relief when he saw Wyatt, 8, a third-grader at Olivet, with his classmates away from the bus. That was until he saw his hands were bloody. He said he and his wife, who arrived moments later, decided to take Wyatt home and get the glass out of his hair and clothes before taking him to a hospital for a check up.
Caldwell said Wyatt cut his hands after the crash trying to pick up his book bag as passersby quickly hurried the children out of the front and back of the bus.
“A lot of it is kind of a blur to him,” Caldwell said. “He remembers he was looking down at something and he heard the bus driver scream and right after he felt and heard the first crash. He said it was one bang and then another bang.”
Caldwell said Wyatt, who was wearing a seatbelt like all of the children, was disoriented and said he didn’t start crying until he saw his classmates were upset and crying.
“This is a tragic event that will be with our community evermore,” Matthew Carey, the district superintendent, said in a statement Saturday. “Mrs. Powell was a beloved member of our community for over 20 years. The children loved her and her colleagues did as well. She passed serving the community...Denise Powell is a hero.”
Powell’s funeral will be held Thursday at the Adams Funeral Home, 64 Broad St. in Woodstown. Services will be at 7 p.m. after the conclusion of a viewing that will start at 5 p.m.
She is survived by daughters, Brittany and April Hogate; their father Ken; her father Joseph; sister, Lori Baker (Michael); brothers, Michael and Joseph Powell; two grandsons, Jacob and Joseph Lawrenson.
Caldwell said the school has provided counselors for group and individual sessions with students and staff. He said the counseling helped Wyatt cross an important threshold.
He had told his parents he didn’t want to ride the bus home anymore. They drove him to and from school Monday. After counseling, which included the Crisis Response Canines team that had therapy dogs for comfort, Caldwell said Wyatt told him he felt better and would ride the bus to school Tuesday.
“It made me feel very proud of the school system and very proud of my son,” he said.
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Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com.
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