NEWTON, Mass. (AP) – Four Newton schoolchildren who were killed in a tour bus crash two years ago were to be remembered Sunday at a memorial gathering in front of their old middle school.
The bus was carrying 42 children from Oak Hill Middle School to a band concert in Halifax, Nova Scotia, when it flipped on its side while trying to negotiate the turn before dawn on April 27, 2001.
Steven Glidden, 12, Gregory Chan and Kayla Rosenberg, both 13, and Melissa Leung, 14, were killed.
“It is still as crushing as it was two years ago,” said Elaine Alpert, Glidden’s mother. “We have learned how to live with it a little better. (But) time doesn’t heal when you’ve lost a child.”
The memorial Sunday evening was to be an informal, unstructured one, and meant not just to remember the four children but others who have died in Newton and outside, Alpert said. After the meeting, friends and classmates of the four planned to stage musical tributes, she said.
The bus crashed when the driver lost control after he sped into a hairpin turn, investigators have said.
The driver, Hin Chi Kan, of New York is wanted in Canada on a minor charge of careless driving, but he cannot be extradited.
Alpert said she was still angry at the driver for the crash, but more so because neither he nor his bus company ever sent a card of condolence or apologized for the families’ loss.
“People from all over the world have sent cards, contributions, gifts, flowers, called up,” she said. “But these people who were there have never bothered to even apologize for our loss and that to me is indecent and unforgiveable.”
AP-ES-04-27-03 1549EDT
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