No students on bus when it strikes telephone pole

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
No children were aboard a Benson Public Schools bus when it crashed into a telephone pole on Swift County Road 57 about two miles northeast of Benson.
Bus driver Twyla Dirksen was found by Benson police officers in the Zielsdorf Auction Service office near where the school bus left the road, Chief Ian Hodge reported. She was holding her neck at the time from an apparent injury.
The police report states that the bus “appeared to have left the roadway in the south bound ditch approximately 100 feet north of the driveway to Zielsdorf Auction Service. The bus continued south bound in the ditch crossing the driveway and striking a telephone pole in the ditch.”
When the CentraCare ambulance from Swift County-Benson Health Services arrived on the scene, Dirksen was transported to the hospital for further care.
At about 10:20 last Wednesday, Hodge met with Dirksen at SCBHS and read her a Miranda Warning.   The police report states that Dirksen agreed to talk to Hodge about the accident.
She told him that she had left the school bus garage to put fuel in the bus for another trip. While driving south bound on County Road 37 she told him that she became nauseated. While reaching for the trash can about two feet away from the driver’s seat, she fell out of her driver’s seat and into the stairwell of the bus, the report says.
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