Local News

It was clear to Maria Batistoni what the agenda of the first meeting of the newly-formed Students Against Driving Drunk at North Hardin High School needed to be in the fall of 1988.

“They needed to heal, they were raw,” she said of the students.

More than 200 students had joined the club, formed months after the bus crash near Carrollton that killed 27 people, including 24 children. Some were students at North.

“What do the kids need?” Batistoni said she asked herself. “What do I need? We need a hug.”

A Radcliff man was arrested Monday morning after state troopers say he sped through a traffic safety checkpoint on Ky. 313 without stopping and nearly struck several officers with his vehicle.

Drew M. McCormick, 23, faces three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment, second-degree criminal mischief, driving under the influence, license to be in possession, reckless driving, resisting arrest, no insurance and menacing.

Before Larry Mahoney chose to consume alcohol, climb behind the wheel of a pickup truck and drive the wrong way on Interstate 71, a young girl returned to the U.S. from Germany and told her parents she wanted to play softball.

Before a group of children and chaperones from Radcliff First Assembly of God cheerfully prepared for a trip to King’s Island, their hopes and dreams intact, there was a worn ball glove belonging to the girl’s father, its dimensions never quite conforming to her small hand.

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.