NEWARK, Ohio — A truck driver who triggered a chain-reaction crash with a bus that killed three Ohio high school band students and three adults was convicted of vehicular homicide Friday but cleared on more serious charges.
The three students killed in the 2023 crash were on a charter bus, and a teacher and two chaperones in another vehicle hit by the tractor trailer also died.
Licking County Judge David Branstool found Jacob McDonald, of Zanesville, guilty on six misdemeanor counts of vehicular homicide, but ruled that he was not guilty of aggravated vehicular homicide, a felony.
The judge said McDonald’s actions in causing the crash were negligent but not reckless. McDonald could have faced three decades in prison if he had been convicted on all of the more serious charges, but instead he now faces a maximum sentence of 18 months, according to his attorney.
Some family members of the victims left the court before the judge finished announcing the verdict.
Prosecutors said McDonald was speeding and failed to brake for slowing traffic on Interstate 70 because he was looking at his phone.
His defense attorney, Chris Brigdon, disputed that, saying that the cellular data cited by investigators did not clearly show what was happening before the crash. Brigdon said after the verdict was announced that McDonald was still devastated by the crash because he knows he caused it.
According to investigators, McDonald’s truck hit an SUV and pushed it into the bus, which was carrying students from the Tuscarawas Valley Local School District in eastern Ohio. Some of the vehicles caught fire.
Five vehicles were involved in the crash in Licking County, east of Columbus. The bus was carrying the students to an Ohio School Boards Association conference in Columbus.