WASHINGTON, N.C. (WITN) – If someone hits your parked car, you’d expect them to take care of the repairs. That’s especially true if you were hit by a school bus.
One Washington woman has found out the hard way that it can take months to get answers – or help.
Our WITN Investigates team looked into what happened and when, if ever, she’ll get compensation for the damage.
“The video shows the school bus making a right turn, and from what I can see it looks like he was too close on his right side, which caused him to hit my car,” explained Carmen Booth. “By the time he realized what he was doing it was just too late.”
Booth walked out of her Washington house on March 6 to find her car, which had been parked on North Harvey Street, had been smashed on its left front side.
“It’s totaled. From what I can understand it’s totaled,” Booth said.
She immediately went back inside and pulled up her Ring doorbell camera footage to see what happened. She was shocked to see a Beaufort County school bus slamming into her Toyota Corolla.
“My driver’s side door all the way to my front end was off,” she explained. “Part of the school bus was still in my car.”
She says it feels like the driver wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings.
“I could’ve been standing on the sidewalk. That would mean he would’ve hit me and dragged me down the road,” Booth said.
It’s now May, and Booth’s car is still at the shop. She’s been using a friend’s vehicle to get around in the meantime, but says a solution shouldn’t be taking this long.
“It would’ve been a different story if I would’ve hit that school bus,” said Booth.
We contacted Beaufort County schools, but a spokesperson said crashes involving buses are handled on a state level.
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office told me it’s a pending matter, and they can’t comment on it.
Booth says she is doing everything the attorney general’s office asks her to do and is in the process of requesting paperwork from her lein holder to send to them.
It’s now been more than two months since her car was hit, yet Booth also hasn’t received any money for a rental car in the meantime.
“Make it right, that’s all I want them to do: Make it right. If they make it right I’ll be alright.” Booth said.
Booth’s car was insured when it was hit. The driver of the bus spoke with police at the scene and was cited for unsafe movement.