OSCEOLA, Iowa -- While 72-year-old bus driver Darwin Griffith, of Osceola, is credited with leading all seven Clarke County school children out of the rear of the bus to safety, he will be forced to pay a fine for the crash that sent them into Squaw Creek.
Two Iowa State Troopers paid Griffith a visit at his Osceola home Thursday afternoon and issued a $195 citation for failure to maintain control of a vehicle. The Clarke County Secondary Roads Department says that stretch of road sees about thirty cars per day and new rock had been laid down in April and it was recently bladed in August.
Sergeant Nathan Ludwig with the Iowa State Patrol says they do not believe speed was a factor, instead they blame poor road conditions due to the weather.
This is the second time in ten days where weather and poor road conditions caused a vehicle to leave the roadway in Clarke County. A Clarke County Crash report on Sunday, August 28, details a driver heading east in the 1600 block of 140th Avenue when the vehicle lost traction due to the condition of the gravel road which the report called all mud and little gravel. It sent the vehicle into a drainage ditch. The man driving and his seven-year-old son escaped with minor injuries.
