‘They just wanted their moms:’ Mother survived deadly Hays bus crash, recounts tragic day

Victoria Limon stood next to the idling school bus after three hours of chaperoning a long-awaited field trip. She pulled her phone from her pocket at 1:36 p.m. and texted her co-workers.

On the bus, driving off.

The special education aide at Tom Green Elementary in Buda had helped gather the group of more than 40 children into a single-file line, including her 5-year-old daughter. She guided them to their green vinyl seats before settling into hers, two rows behind the driver.

She and 54 other teachers and pre-kindergarten students on the bus then eased from the Capital of Texas Zoo parking lot on their 40-minute return trip to campus.

As the bus turned started chugging down the busy Texas Highway 21, Limon and several teachers traded cell phone photos, whispering as many children drifted to sleep.

About five minutes later, another staff member told the 43-year-old mother of five that her daughter, Diana, also had dozed off. Limon glanced to see Diana’s head hanging into the aisle and that she was squeezing out her young seatmate. Limon traded seats with the other girl, placing Diana’s head in her lap as the bus rumbled on.

Twenty-five minutes into the trip, as the bus steamed west in a single lane with a 65 mile-per-hour speed limit, a parade of eastbound cars whisked past them with no lane between.

Limon had left her backpack and cell phone in the seat she had been sitting in, so she stared out the window at the passing cars. Then, as her heart jumped into her throat, she saw the 33-ton concrete truck barreling down the highway, veering from his lane into theirs.

Limon heard the sound of twisting metal and felt the crush of a violent impact. She realized she and the bus were being hurtled onto their right sides, spinning counterclockwise as the bus screeched off the highway.

Her survival and maternal instincts kicked in instantly as they came to a rest upright, but leaning, down an embankment. She saw some of the children, including Diana, tossed into a pile, many of them crying and bloody.

***

Limon is wearing a “Tom Green Strong” T-shirt with its hornet logo and sitting on her living room sofa.

She is the first passenger from the bus to publicly speak, and the aftermath of the trauma pierces through any normal conversation. Limon cheerfully answers the door to her home, offers guests water or a soft drink and a place to sit.

Then, she starts talking about that day. Her body tenses and her hands shake slightly. Her husband, Eddie, stands feet away, reminding her that she’s OK. Diana was at school.

Limon is among multiple families who have brought lawsuits stemming from the crash against the driver of the truck and his employer. Accounts such as Limon’s will likely be critical evidence as the cases move through the courts in coming months.

More: Hays school bus with 44 pre-K students, 11 adults rolls over in Bastrop County; two dead

Limon divides her life before the crash – and after. But Tom Green Elementary has been – and will always be – an anchor for her family, she says. Three of her five children attended there.

The community around the campus is close-knit and family-focused. Four neighborhoods of single-family homes surround the 850-student school of majority Hispanic children. The school, built in 1985, is named for a Hays County agriculture teacher. Because of the closeness to campus, most children instead walk or are driven by parents a short distance.

For some, a first-time bus ride that day added to the sense of adventure.

Limon left a job she had for a decade working as a financial analyst to spend more time with her children, who range in age from 24 to a 1-year-old, and started working as a Tom Green substitute teacher in January 2021. It turned into full-time staff position in a special education class soon thereafter. Limon instantly knew she was in the right place, doing the right thing.

“I love the school,” Limon says. “I love the teachers, my classroom, and my students. I love my job.”

***

Six hours before the crash, Limon stood in the kitchen of her family’s two-story home putting the final touches on sack-lunches – an H-E-B lunchable with raspberry flavored water for Diana and a chef salad and turkey sandwich for herself. Her daughter bounded down the tan-carpeted stairs beaming with a Christmas morning-like joy.

“I am so excited!” Diana exclaimed.

The day had been weeks in the works with growing excitement as teachers made sure the parents of each child signed a permission slip and knew to send lunches.

As they packed the yellow 2011 model International bus – each child wearing special-ordered $7 green tie-dye shirts with the school’s name and yellow lanyards with name tags – the ride was filled with a cacophony of children's chatter.

Once they pulled into the zoo’s parking lot around 10 a.m., many parents who had carpooled were already there waiting. The zookeeper gave them maps of the exhibits, and the children squealed as he did a one-man show with an otter. They petted goats and reptiles. Limon snapped a picture of a handler draping a boa constrictor around her daughter’s neck as Diana sheepishly grinned.

About an hour into the trip, students and chaperones sat at picnic tables for lunch and began winding down the tour shortly before 1 p.m. – nap time for many of the children.

***

In the seconds immediately after the crash, Limon took only a second to absorb the shock.

Even though they had been in the same seat, Diana now appeared tossed into a different row. Limon could see and hear her crying – relieved to know that she was not badly hurt.

In what seemed like only a few moments, bystanders showed up to the bus and started rescuing passengers through doors and windows.

Limon remembers helping lift some of the children, including Diana, to the strangers before they pulled her out of the same window.

She saw a bloody fellow staff member laying on her side, but didn’t recognize her because she was so badly injured.

She also saw a bystander carrying a limp boy, covered in what seemed like a white T-shirt or towel.

Once on the side of the sun-drenched road, Limon gathered with the children around her, including Diana. Some asked if she had any Band-Aids.

“They just wanted their moms,” she says.

Paramedics divided them into groups based on the seriousness of their injuries and the need to go to the hospital.

Limon and Diana were among those to get loaded into an ambulance. Once at the hospital, she and other staff began piecing together information that someone – they didn’t know if it was a staff member or student – died.

She later realized that the boy she saw being carried by the bystander was 5-year-old Ulises Rodriguez Montoya, who died at the scene.

Limon cried on the emergency room gurney. She had no broken bones, only a broken heart.

“I can’t imagine what that mom is going through,” she said. “I just can’t imagine. It makes you thankful to have them, and it makes you think about all the times you take for granted, that they are going to come running down the stairs.”

The crash also killed University of Texas doctoral student Ryan Wallace, who was traveling in a separate car on his late lunch break to pick up his two nephews at another school for a Friday night family night.

***

Today, Limon is still in pain.

Glass slashed her left leg, and she fractured four vertebrae, requiring her to walk with a cane for now.

“I was bruised from head to toe,” she says. “I couldn’t move. I couldn’t sit without help.”

It took three days of showers for her and Diana to get all the glass out of their hair, she says. Her daughter also was badly bruised and had cuts.

She is concerned for Diana. Right after the crash, her daughter drew marks on the face, legs and arms of her dolls to resemble her own wounds. Diana seems to be returning to normal now, but Limon fears delayed PTSD symptoms could show up later.

“These things just last,” she says.

Limon is also angry. In the days after the crash, she learned with other passengers and parents that the driver of the concrete truck, a 42-year-old man named Jerry Hernandez, told investigators that he had smoked marijuana and done “a small amount” of cocaine 12 hours before the crash.

Police have charged Hernandez with criminally negligent homicide. At the time of the crash, Hernandez also had warrants out of Hays County for bond violations on past, unrelated charges of assault/family violence and criminal mischief.

“It is incredibly egregious,” Limon’s attorney, Scott Hendler said. He said that as lawsuits mount, he fears the trucking company – which has declined to comment – won’t carry enough insurance to pay for all the damages to the injured children and staff.

More: DPS report provides new details of fatal Hays district school bus crash

Limon hopes to return to work, but right now is too soon. She still wakes from nightmares, swinging into the darkness of her bedroom as if trying to grab a child. She hates riding, even in a car, since the crash, especially on a two-lane road. She braces when she sees oncoming traffic.

Limon’s mind keeps flashing back to the moment just before impact. She desperately wants to rewrite the story of that day.

“These kids had so much fun,” she said. “It is so unfortunate that this is their first experience being on a bus, being on a field trip.”

She paused.

“I just wish it could have gone differently,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Mother survived deadly Hays school bus crash, recounts zoo field trip