The Alton Bus Crash

By Juan P. Carmona

A September morning in 1989 changed Alton's history forever. At 7:34 a.m., a Dr Pepper truck collided with Mission School Bus no. 6. After the bus and its occupants plunged into a water-filled caliche pit, twenty-one students lost their lives. The resulting investigation flooded the small South Texas community with reporters and lawyers. The heavily scrutinized legal battle divided the city, but it did ultimately produce changes in school bus safety that continue to save lives today. Juan Carmona navigates the complicated legacy of the tragic accident and its aftermath.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Aug 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781439667781

Juan P. Carmona

Juan P. Carmona is a social studies teacher at Donna High School and a dual-enrollment history instructor through South Texas College. He graduated with honors from the American Military University with a master's degree in American history and was the recipient of the 2018 James F. Veninga Outstanding Teaching Humanities Award by Humanities Texas. His primary field of research is the history of the South Texas borderlands. Mr. Carmona is the author of "Immigration and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo," published in the Latino Book Review on March 23, 2018; "Thieves: Land Ownership in Texas," published in the Latino Book Review on September 14, 2017; "April 1910," a short story published in La Noria Literary Journal in April 2013; and "Home," a short story published in La Noria Literary Journal in August 2013.

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Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC

www.historypress.com

Copyright © 2019 by Juan Carmona

All rights reserved

Cover image courtesy of the Monitor, April 19, 1993, 2D.

First published 2019

E-Book edition 2019

ISBN 978.1.43966.778.1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019940046

Print edition ISBN 978.1.46714.361.5

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Dedicated to the twenty-one young lives that ended on September 21, 1989, as well as the survivors, the families, the community and everyone else who was touched by the events of that day.

Picture of the caliche pit today. Courtesy of Jack Bloodworth.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Prologue: Walking Home from School

Introduction

PART I: THE ACCIDENT

The Men

Collision

Outside the Bus

Community

School

A Darkness Descends

The Investigation

PART II: THE COURTS

The Criminal Trial of Ruben Perez: The Prosecution

The Criminal Trial of Ruben Perez: The Defense

The Lawsuits

Alex’s Story

LULAC

Barratry and Lawsuits

PART III: AFTERMATH

Survivors and Community

Changes

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book in its technical form is a culmination of years of research and interviews, a project that began years ago when my brother and I had a small production company and I posed the idea of producing a documentary on the subject. This was before the emergence of social media, and the internet was not as pervasive a tool as it is today. We were only able to contact a few people, and the project never came to fruition. However, about two years ago, I was approached by Andy Zavala (my cousin’s husband) to assist him with a documentary on the subject. I cannot thank him enough for facilitating my reentry into the subject. He used his resources to obtain many of the interviews, which assisted me with the completion of this project, and I look forward to continuing to assist him with his film project and see that come to fruition as well. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge the help I obtained from Ms. Maria Oralia Barrera with the editing of the manuscript and Ms. Alondra Chapa, who helped me organize my research, both of which made the writing of this book much easier. Finally, I would like to thank Mr. Ben Gibson of The History Press for taking an interest in getting this story told.

On the other hand, when it comes to acknowledging the people who helped bring about the completion of this book, there are no words that can express the gratitude I have to those who sat down to share their stories with me. These were difficult conversations to have, whether it was in person or over the phone, but they shared their stories nonetheless. I will be forever grateful. This story has touched so many people, and the positive results from such a tragic incident will no doubt continue to save lives into the future.

PROLOGUE

WALKING HOME FROM SCHOOL

It was the usual hot Valley afternoon, and my cousin Gabriel and I were walking home from school. We could feel the heat radiating from the black asphalt as we walked alongside old Highway 83. The highway ran the length of the Rio Grande Valley where I grew up. As the valley developed, it and the railroad tracks that are parallel to it were usually the dividing point between rich and poor, Anglo and Mexican. In Donna, where I grew up, it was the southern side for the Mexicans and the northern side for the Anglos. One could easily assess this as you drove north and south of the city. For other cities in the Valley, it was the opposite; however, there was always some sort of division.

As we walked along the highway toward my house, we could feel the hot wind of the cars that flew by us and kicked up some of the ever-present dust, which accumulated on all things during periods of drought. We had just come up to a neighborhood corner store that was along the way when a bus passed us, and just as it did, the emergency door flew open and a young Mexican boy was flung out of the bus and landed on the road just before us. I froze. I can still see him lying there on his stomach a few feet away from me, his head turned to the left. I heard a crack as he hit the ground. His mouth was slightly open, and either from his mouth or his head, there was bright red blood running along the black asphalt. I stood frozen and stared, shocked, fascinated and afraid because I did not know what to do. The bus kept going, unaware it was minus one passenger.

This was a time before cellphones or even 911, a time when you actually had to memorize numbers, and at that moment my mind was blank. My cousin, on the other hand, knew exactly what to do. We ran toward the store and were met by the clerk, who had seen what had happened from behind the counter. My cousin yelled, Call the police! The clerk looked just as befuddled as myself: I don’t know…. 464-4481, Gabriel yelled at him. Call 464-4481! The young man from the store stood frozen, looking beyond us to the poor boy bleeding his life away on the asphalt. Gabriel ran in and made the call.

I wish I could write more about what happened that day, but that is all I can recall. I didn’t even go home and tell my family. I just went home, listened to the news and heard that he was leaning against the emergency exit lever when it opened. That story has stayed in the recesses of my mind since it happened. Every time I hear about a school bus accident, the image of that boy lying on the ground, with the color of the blood against the asphalt, is what pops into my mind. That was the first image that came to me on September 21, 1989, when someone came into Mrs. Morales’s Spanish class and said that there had been a bus accident and some students had been killed.

It was my first brush with death, and sadly, for those students aboard Mission school bus no. 6, it was theirs as well. Except their experience was deeply personal, for although I did not know the boy who died on the road before my eyes, these students were intimately connected to the victims. They were their brothers, sisters, cousins, friends and schoolmates. Their losses would leave a profound mark on them, their families and their community. For them, the words tragedy and loss are not strong enough; indeed, there is no combination of words, nor a book, nor volumes of books, that could ever truly define their loss.

INTRODUCTION

ALTON, TEXAS

The city of Alton, Texas, is located in the South Texas border region known as the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Most residents of the area refer to it as the RGV (Rio Grande Valley), or simply the Valley. The city was founded during a time of great change in the Rio Grande Valley. Its economy was shifting from a ranching to agricultural economy through the introduction of irrigation and railroads. In fact, it is from a railroad that the city gets its name, the Alton Railroad Company from the city of Alton, Illinois. The town was established in 1911 with an initial population of fifty residents.¹

Railroads came to the RGV through a concerted effort of men like Richard King, John Kenedy, Jim Wells, John Armstrong and Robert Driscoll, all of whom had within prior decades acquired large tracts of land from Mexican American landowners who were forced to sell due to a drop in cattle prices, drought and inability to pay taxes, as well as through less than honorable methods (this was a period of violence and terror for the Mexican American community of the Rio Grande Valley). These men saw the acquisition of this land as an investment whose return would come from a change in economies from ranching to farming. However, in order to sell the Valley as a place to make money in agriculture, the area needed to be connected to the national market, and that meant a railroad was needed. However, Southern Pacific refused on the grounds that it would not be a profitable investment. So, these men funded the creation of a railroad in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.²

The combination of the connecting of rails to the Valley and the creation of irrigation districts succeeded in bringing about this transition.

Alton Water Tower. Photo by author.

Despite the fact that the Valley’s main industry was switching to agriculture, this was not the industry on which Alton would be centered. Alton’s product would be the very ground on which it was founded. The city would provide caliche (sedimentary rock) for construction products throughout the country.³ Tragically, caliche extraction and the pits it created would be indelibly linked to the heartbreak that occurred on September 21, 1989.

The city grew slowly. It maintained its own post office from 1913 to 1916, after which it was run out by the larger neighboring city of Mission. It would be the same story for its school. This schoolhouse was your typical rural six-grade school, named Alton School after the city. It was first managed under the Hidalgo County school superintendent, but like the post office, it was annexed into the Mission Consolidated Independent School District (CISD). This school still exists as Alton Elementary within the Mission School District—it was a Mission school bus that the students were riding on that calamitous day.⁴

Alton would not be officially chartered until April 1, 1978. In its infancy, the city manager, mayor and four aldermen met in a rented room. Eventually, they were able to purchase a church house, which became city hall. In time and through federal housing grants, the city expanded its services, providing all the major utilities to its residents. Then it began to promote more commercial development, and the city slowly began to grow. At its birth in 1978, Alton elected