WARWICK — One moment, 15-year-old Kimberly Pisaturo, a smart and popular sophomore at Pilgrim High School, was walking to school, looking down at her cell phone, witnesses say, when she stepped into a crosswalk running alongside busy Warwick Avenue and into the path of a turning school bus.
She died there Friday morning before the 7:24 first bell sounded just up the street.
“For someone this young to lose their life is a tragedy of unmeasurable proportion,” School Committee member Paul Cannistra said hours later, long after firefighters had removed the red tarp encircling the place behind the bus where Kimberly’s body had lain, and the intersection of Warwick Avenue and Pilgrim Parkway had resumed its hectic pace.
The accident happened around 7:05 a.m. Police Chief Stephen M. McCartney said the bus, carrying about 20 Pilgrim students, had been driving north on Warwick Avenue. It stopped at the intersection. On a green light, it turned left onto Pilgrim Parkway heading for the high school about a quarter-mile away.
Witnesses told the police Kimberly appeared to be looking at her cell phone and had her head down when she walked into the crosswalk as the bus was turning in, McCartney said. Earphones and an iPod were also found on her, he said in a statement; it wasn’t clear whether she had been listening to music.
Kimberly may also have been wearing the hood of a sweatshirt pulled up, said School Supt. Peter Horoschak.
Cellphone use has killed more people than swine flu! It’s time to panic and put an end to the cellphone pandemic.
It was nice of you not to make this a Darwin Award.
Hmmm…
The first sentence said she was smart.
#2 And you wonder why news outlets are waning in popularity…
#1 – You think the Darwin Award is reserved only for adults? I think not and that this girl should be one of the youngest recipients of it. Stupidity knows no age limits.
What makes this tragedy even sadder is that she was indeed an honors student. Someone sounded a warning with their car horn but neither she or the bus driver saw each other.
#4 No, I don’t think the Darwin Award is reserved only for adults. But most of us have done plenty of stupid things when we were young. I’ve done much worse things than cross a street wearing a Walkman. Why am I not dead? Pure dumb luck.
And if you have children, it’s hard not to feel sorry for the girl’s parents. I wouldn’t want to see my adolescent daughter’s picture with a Darwin Award banner.
Lousy bus driver. Turning left is not a high speed maneuver… especially with a school bus… and watching for pedestrians at that time is paramount.
People here in San Francisco know that if you are in the crosswalk line no harm can come to you regardless of whether you’re walking, running, or riding a bike. Someone must have tampered with the Warwick Ave. line’s force field.
I go through this kind of shit every day leaving work. I dive through a college town and young people walk off the corner all the time against the light. I just saw one looking down at her phone Friday as she walked up to the corner to cross. She stopped when she caught (out of the corner of her eye) my car moving next to her.
I am afraid I will hit one of them someday.
solution…. air horns…but like the type on large ocean going vessels.. that sound would knock them right on their ass..
When the Universe gives an I.Q. test pass fail can be a real bleep.
Yeah it’s a Darwin award but this can happen to anybody who is inattentive for a momment and we have all done that. So for the rest of us lucked out.
Your comment to the article I find in bad taste! This is a tragedy, person named and you make a joke of it?! Sorry guys, this was too ‘high school’ for me… Real bad taste!
#5 – cheapdaddy – Someone sounded a warning with their car horn but neither she or the bus driver saw each other.
Perhaps they were texting each other?
#12 – T-T-T-Thor
I agree with you. McCullough, remove your comment and put on the freaking Darwin Award banner!
“a smart and popular sophomore at Pilgrim High School”
I guess she wasn’t as smart as they thought.
Doubly bad here in Vegas since the tourists don’t obey the walk/don’t walk signs. Don’t know how many times I’ve almost clipped someone stepping off the curb against the light, talking or texting and not paying attention to the traffic. I’m surprised more of y’all don’t get run over here. And you definitely don’t want to end up in the hospitals here.
McCullough says “Cellphone use has killed more people than swine flu”. Actually it was the motor vehicle which did the killing. I would say motor vehicles have killed more than died in WWII.
Stop blaming pedestrians.
When I grew up, we where taught to look both ways before crossing a street. They don’t seem to do that anymore.
Back then you learned the real world and appreciated the laws of physics, big things moving can hurt little you walking really really bad.
Today not many people look both ways before crossing. They live in their on fantasy world. They don’t seem to understand the basic law of momentum, big things moving can hurt little you walking really really bad.
The answer is simple, take your head out of your ass.
Good. Stupidity like this needs to be exterminated from the gene pool, and if it takes a bus to do it thats fine by me.
What the hell happened to looking both ways when crossing the road, especially a student who was apparently smarter than most of her peers if the words ‘honors student’ is to be believed. Obviously she wasn’t.
#16. I disagree. It was the pedestrian who got in the way of a moving bus…..the bus is considered the privileged vessel (to use a nautical term) because it is easier for the pedestrian to avoid a collision than the bus. I know this may sound funny, but it makes perfect sense. On the sea, the ship that takes the longest to stop, ALWAYS has the right of way.
It should be true on land also.
#20 – McCullough – …takes the longest to stop, ALWAYS has the right of way.
It should be true on land also.
Not a bad idea…
#23. pedro- Pedestrians always have the right of way….It’s true in many places I have lived, including here in Colorado. But it’s a stupid law in my opinion. A pedestrian who crosses against a light should have to forfeit the privilege.
#21. That’ll learn ’em.
#12 – Awww, boo fucking hoo.
It’s a good thing this dingbat was taken out of the gene pool before she was old enough to drive! Then she’d be driving an SUV and looking at her cell phone.
All in all, then, good timing.
Why would she be walking to school if a school bus passes by her walk to school? Maybe she isn’t so smart after all.
If she woul;d have been taught since childhood that the cars on the street are much stronger than her own body – regardless of the laws regulating the street traffic – and that any street crossing may result with her death simply because the other person behind the wheel woke too late that day, or even because he/she sneesed and didn’t notice her in this crucial split of second, she *would have paid attention* and she would have been alive today.
Alas she was raised to believe that the “law” can protect her from bad things that can happen to her – and she ended up dead.
At schools kids are taught lot of useless politically correct bullshit nowadays, but they are not taught basic stuff anymore – like to look left/right/left before you cross the street.
Darwin Award to her *and* US education system.
I guess we as humans are not smart enough to figure out when it is the right time to use this technology.It is becoming a big distraction for us and its too bad many are not capable of using it properly.So much so we die or kill others using it. Is the cell phone bad for us?
It’s easy enough to do this kind of thing. We’re all absent minded or distracted occasionally. It doesn’t mean you’re stupid.
I was walking home and texting a couple of years ago and a drunk punched me because he asked for a cigarette and I didn’t really pay attention to him. Little did I know at the time he was really just looking out for my wellbeing.
#1 I disagree . Hail Darwin! Hail