Wrongful death suit filed in bus crash that killed SC middle school student
The sister of a child killed in a school bus accident last spring has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a Lexington County school district, major tire manufacturers and others for negligence that she says led to the wreck on Interstate 77.
In the lawsuit, Elizabeth Gonzalez-Linares says a tire that blew out and caused the crash was defective.
The suit blames the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. and Cooper Tire and Rubber company for manufacturing a tire that did not perform as it was supposed to. It says Lexington County School District Two had a responsibility to ensure the bus was safely maintained.
State highway patrol investigators had previously noted that the tire had several nails in it, but an attorney for Gonzalez-Linares said the nails did not puncture the tire. Instead, the tire failed because of a tread-belt separation, the suit says. Components inside the tire did not perform as they should have, it says.
“Our investigation shows that there was a lack of adhesion between the internal components that allowed it to come apart,’’ Ronnie Crosby, a lawyer representing Gonzalez-Linares, said in an interview with The State. “The long and short, we saw signs that the tire components did not properly adhere to one another during the manufacturing process.’
The Gonzalez-Linares lawsuit is among eight filed by relatives of children who were on the Lexington County School District Two bus. All allege various levels of injuries and harm as a result of negligence. The driver of the bus, who was injured, also has filed suit.
The lawsuits filed, in state court, could eventually cause those accused of negligence to pay millions of dollars in damages, but Crosby said the exact amount sought won’t be available until attorneys do more detailed investigation.
According to the Gonzalez-Linares lawsuit, Lexington Two failed to service and inspect the tire for defects, even though the left front tire had separated a year earlier and caused a bus crash. The tire, manufactured at a Cooper facility in China, was prone to tread belt separation, and the tire companies knew it, the suit says.
In addition to Goodyear, Cooper and the Lexington Two district, others named in the lawsuit are Blue Bird Body Co., Bluebird Global Corp., Blanchard Machinery and Jim Whitehead Tire Service Inc. The Blue Bird companies design and build school buses. Blanchard, which works with Blue Bird, sold the bus to Lexington Two. Whitehead sells tires and provides maintenance to them.
Last April’s bus wreck occurred as students from Pine Ridge Middle School were on the way back from a field trip to the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte.
As the bus traveled through Chester County – about halfway between Charlotte and Columbia – a tire failed, causing the driver to lose control of the bus. The bus then collided with a guardrail and overturned, court documents show.
Jose Maria Gonzales Linares, 13, died from injuries suffered in the bus wreck. Other students were shaken up that day, with 21 people transported to a hospital for observation and treatment. The bus had about 35 people on board at the time of the crash.
Lexington District Two declined comment Friday.
Cooper Tire and Rubber said the tire at issue was not “unreasonably dangerous,’’ blaming the driver of the bus and inspectors for the crash, the Charleston newspaper, The Post and Courier, reported Nov. 6.
Statements from Blanchard and Jim Whitehead lawyers expressed condolences as a result of the crash and stressed that they place safety first. Whitehead and Bluebird also denied responsibility for the crash, the Charleston paper reported.
This story was originally published November 7, 2025 at 1:15 PM.
