A Georgetown University Transportation System bus and a minivan with Pakistani diplomatic plates collided on Canal Road on Tuesday afternoon, sending the van’s three passengers to the emergency room.
The accident occurred at 1:00 p.m. as GUTS bus driver Noel Tiongson attempted to make a left-hand turn into campus from Canal Road. He was returning to campus for a lunch break when the minivan hit the back of the bus, which was not carrying any passengers at the time.
“The van was squashed,” Georgetown Director of Public Saftey Jeff Van Slyke, who personally responded to the accident, said. “It was like an accordion.”
Van Slyke said that when he arrived at the scene of the accident, he saw the driver of the minivan lying on the ground. Van Slyke helped emergency responders to get a board under the driver, and he drove the van’s two young passengers to the hospital in his car. The children in the van identified the driver as their servant. The van belonged to the children’s father, who later arrived at the scene.
Georgetown emergency room staff would not to provide information about the current condition of the van’s passengers, citing patient confidentiality. Van Slyke said that one of the two children received only minor scratches as a result of the collision.
Tiongson, who was not working at Georgetown on Wednesday, could not be reached for comment, but a GUTS bus driver who works with him said Tiongson “was shook-up” when she saw him after the accident on Tuesday.
“The bus had a lot of damage in the back,” the driver, who preferred to remain anonymous, said. “They towed it this morning, and it looked like the impact was real hard.”
The driver added that the left-hand turn from Canal Road is not very difficult, and she wondered how the accident had happened.
“I can’t tell you the last time we had an accident around here,” the driver said. “That’s the last thing you ever want to happen.”
—Additional reporting by Will Sommer
