Local News

Twenty-five years ago, 15-year-old Quinton Higgins spent about a month in Kosair Children’s Hospital after suffering lung damage and second- and third-degree burns  in the fiery bus crash.

Today, Higgins drives a Hardin County Schools bus.

The differences between the bus he drives every school day and the repurposed 1977 Ford B-700 school bus he was in that night in 1988 are like “night and day,” Higgins said.

“It’s just a totally different bus today,” he said.

Some days, without warning, Darrin Jaquess is taken back to that dark place on Interstate 71 late on a Saturday night in May, nearly 25 years ago, after a fun-filled, memory-making day at King’s Island.

Harold Dennis, Carey Aurentz Cummins and Ciaran Foran Madden are reminded of that night with a look in the mirror or when they get out of bed each day.

 Jaquess remembers the smell from the burning school bus that had carried 67 people to the amusement park and the start of the return trip to Radcliff. Only 40 would make it home alive.

It was Friday the 13th, 1988. The last bell rang at Meadow View Elementary School and fourth-grade students Robin “Jill” Williams and Patty Nunnallee were the last two students in the classroom.