ST. LOUIS – A school bus company will pay $1.3 million to the family of a St. Louis boy struck by a hit-and-run driver three years ago.
A St. Louis jury ordered First Student Inc. to pay damages to student Dylan Jackson and his family. Jurors determined the bus company was negligent by not providing a new driver with instructions on where Jackson should have been dropped off moments before he was struck by a hit-and-run driver.
In October 2019, Jackson was nine years old 9 and a fourth-grader at Kipp Victory Academy. Investigators say Jackson tried to cross the street at Goodfellow Boulevard and Lalite Avenue, though a car drove around the bus, hit the child and took off from the scene.
The lawsuit, filed one month later, alleged that First Student and its bus driver were negligent by letting Jackson off at the wrong corner, which required him to cross several lanes of traffic to get home. According to the lawsuit, Jackson told the driver a day earlier that his normal drop-off location was a different corner at that intersection.
First Student and the driver denied the allegations. According to the St. Louis Judicial Court, the
company responded in a court filing that its legal duty was to drop off Jackson in a “reasonably safe place” and not to provide its driver a route sheet or the child’s home address.
The jury, in a three-day trial, cleared the bus driver of liability, but holds First Student responsible for $1.3 million in damages.