Tragedy at the tracks: Student, driver killed after train and school bus crash

By Sarah Volpenhein and Garrett Richie on Jan 6, 2015 at 11:30 a.m.

LARIMORE, N.D. — A bus returning students home after school here Monday struck a westbound train, killing the driver, 62-year-old Max Danner, and a 17-year-old girl.
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In a news release Tuesday morning, the North Dakota Highway Patrol said the crash injured five boys, ages 6 to 16, and seven girls, from ages 5 to 14. The train engineer was a 55-year-old Lake Park, Minn., man, and the train conductor was a 32-year-old West Fargo woman. The Highway Patrol will release names later this afternoon.

The bus was traveling north on 36th Street Northeast, a gravel road near the intersection of Grand Forks County Road 4, at about 3:40 p.m., when it failed to yield to a stop sign and struck the westbound BNSF Railway train, ejecting several children from the bus, said Lt. Troy Hischer of the Highway Patrol. The train was pulling empty flat-bed cars.
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Reporters Anna Burleson, Brandi Jewett, Jennifer Johnson and Charly Haley contributed to this article.

By Sarah Volpenhein on Jan 7, 2015 at 10:29 p.m.

The parents of the 17-year-old girl killed in the train-bus collision outside Larimore, N.D., Monday say their daughter died trying to save the busload of students from an oncoming train.

In an email to family and friends, Judy and Paul Sandstrom say their daughter Cassidy Sandstrom rushed to the front of the bus when Max Danner, the 62-year-old school bus driver, “slumped over” in his chair, with the bus stopped on the railroad tracks east of Larimore.
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The message conflicts with what North Dakota Highway Patrol investigators have said, namely that they believe Danner’s driving was not impaired by any kind of medical condition, at least at this point in the investigation. ... “Our thoughts right now are he failed to provide a safe stopping distance,” Lt. Troy Hischer, of the Highway Patrol, told the Herald on Tuesday.
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It is unclear why Danner did not yield to the stop sign, whether a medical condition of Danner’s played a role in the accident as the email suggests or whether it was driver error that caused the crash as investigators believe.