Mother recounts son’s call after drunk school van driver allegedly runs from police
The mother of one of the child passengers on a school van that was said to have crashed in Pittsburgh due to drunk driving recounted what she heard from her son as the driver fled the scene.
By Felicity Taylor
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PITTSBURGH (WTAE) — The mother of one of the child passengers on a school van that was said to have crashed in Pittsburgh due to drunk driving recounted what she heard from her son as the driver fled the scene.
Angela Walsh’s 11-year-old son, Nathan, was one of five children on a First Student van coming home from school. He called her from another student’s phone.
“I could hear them in the background. Some were crying, and some of them were trying to communicate with the driver by telling him, ‘Mr. Jeff, please stop. Please pull over. The police told you to pull over.’ And I could hear him. At one point, he said, ‘Why?’ But then he was mostly just ignoring them,” Walsh said.
Nathan was the oldest in the van, with the youngest being just eight years old.
“Definitely traumatized. Just really nervous about everything. Not sure when he’s going to want to get back on a bus again,” Walsh said.
The driver, 66-year-old Jeffrey Irwin, now faces more than two dozen charges, including DUI and child endangerment.
Police said Irwin crashed into a car near the 16th Street Bridge around 4 p.m. and then sped away with the children still onboard.
Using their cellphones, the kids managed to contact their families, and GPS tracking eventually allowed police to locate and pull over the van in Pittsburgh’s Saint Clair neighborhood. According to the criminal complaint, Irwin admitted to having three to four alcoholic drinks around noon and was unable to stand properly on scene.
“It was a little bit of a helpless feeling, knowing that there was nothing I could do. I was too far away. But I was just really proud that they were able to do that and how clearly they were able to relay the information to us,” Walsh said.
The Baldwin-Whitehall School District uses a private driving company to bring these kids to and from a charter school. Walsh said Irwin had been a driver since February and missed his Friday morning pickup.
Walsh learned Saturday in the criminal complaint that Irwin had previously faced DUI and fleeing charges in 2001.
“That was shocking. I don’t even know how you get hired by a bus company with a DUI on your record,” she said.
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