‘I wish I had died’: Loreto schoolgirl describes life after devastating bus crash

6 days ago 5

A teenage girl who was thrown from a school bus when a truck ploughed into it has told a court she had sometimes wished she had died rather than survived with debilitating injuries.

She was 15 when Brett Michael Russell crashed his truck, which had faulty brakes, into the bus carrying dozens of Loreto College students from Ballarat to the airport for a much-anticipated NASA camp in the US in September 2022.

The badly damaged truck and school bus after the crash in September 2022.

On Wednesday, Russell, 63, formally pleaded guilty to a dozen charges, including 10 counts of negligently causing serious injury and two of conduct endangering persons, after injuring 27 students, four school employees, the bus driver and three roadside workers.

The girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, read out an emotional statement to the County Court of Victoria, detailing how her life has changed since the devastating crash.

The crash left her with a partial amputation of her left foot, rib fractures, a traumatic brain injury and damaged organs.

During the months of recovery, she said she wrote down her thoughts in a journal, and in her darkest moments, she questioned why she survived.

“I’ll never have everything I had before … I wish I had died,” the young woman said.

But she also said she was “very, very glad” to be alive but wanted the suffering to be over.

“I don’t see myself ever getting through this,” she said.

She said she struggled when people told her how she was brave or a strong person because of what she went through.

“I haven’t done anything brave, I’m simply living, but I’m not even living my best life, because I can’t even do anything,” she said.

The bus crashed down a steep embankment on the Western Highway in Bacchus Marsh in September 2022.

The teenager expressed frustration at not being able to learn to ice skate or attend her debutante ball – or go on the NASA camp she had been on her way to when the bus was hit.

“Having that opportunity taken away from me was incredibly hard to grasp,” she said.

While the young woman was among dozens of survivors and family members in court, Russell appeared via videolink from prison.

He used a crutch and listened to the hearing with his arms crossed or in his lap.

Russell admitted to knowing the brakes on his truck and the two trailers he was towing were faulty.

In documents released to the media, it was revealed the experienced truck driver knew there were issues with the brakes and had reported this to his boss.

In an interview with police months after the crash, he said his boss told him it would take a day before the parts needed to fix the brakes would arrive.

But he said he thought he would “be alright” despite the brake issues.

When detectives asked him if he was aware of the risk, he said: “Yes. And I still took the risk.”

About 15 kilometres before the crash, there were warning alarms about the brakes going off in his cabin, Russell told police.

Soon after, Russell began approaching roadworks and was unable to slow down, crashing into the rear of the school bus, shunting it through a barrier and causing it to repeatedly roll down the embankment.

Wednesday’s plea hearing was originally scheduled for earlier this year, but Russell failed to attend. The court was told that he was in hospital.