ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — After a fun day at her daughter’s house, family members loaded Aida Maldonado and her wheelchair onto an Access Lynx bus, promising to see her the following day.
It was supposed to be a 30-minute ride back to her nursing home, where other family members were waiting to greet her and get her settled. Her pajamas were already neatly folded on her bed.
The family members waited – and waited. Maldonado didn’t arrive at the scheduled time.
They knew it had another stop to make before it went to the nursing home, so they logged into the bus tracking app. They saw the bus, not moving, in the middle of Rock Springs Road.
Maldonado never made it home. Just after 6 p.m., a Mustang traveling above the speed limit slammed into the side of the bus hard enough to knock it off its axles.
It wasn’t clear if the driver saw the bus and braked before the crash, as there were only a few tiny skid marks on the road.
Troopers said Maldonado and the other passenger, an 81-year-old man who neighbors said regularly took the bus to his dialysis appointments, did not survive the crash.
The Mustang’s 18-year-old driver and 17-year-old passenger, who have also not been identified, remained hospitalized as of Tuesday afternoon, troopers said.
“We still can’t believe it. We went to the nursing home yesterday to pick up some of her stuff… it’s really hard,” Maldonado’s granddaughter, Edna McGrew said.
McGrew and her son called Maldonado the center of the family who lived a colorful, caring and full life. They said she loved music and jokingly referred to the Puerto Rican singer Chayanne as her boyfriend. Last month, they took her to Miami to see the artist for her 94th birthday.
They said she also loved her family, all the way down to her two-year-old great-great-grandson.
“Every time you see her, she always say, like, god bless everybody. I love everyone,” her great-grandson, Sergio Torres, described.
McGrew said she went by the crash site and saw the hearses pulling away. In addition to arranging a funeral for her grandmother, she said her focus is on getting justice as the investigation into the crash continues.
“Some people have said to me, ‘Be glad that grandma’s bus was in the way and maybe a younger person didn’t get killed,’ but I don’t see it that way,” McGrew said. “I just hope people realize the damage they do.”
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