She was hit by school bus, left dying in Tacoma street. Here’s how a tragedy unfolded
For weeks, the death of Brittanee Parker remained a mystery.
Passersby found the body of the 32-year-old Tacoma resident in the middle of South 11th Street the morning of Oct. 4. Details of her death were few in the days following.
According to police reports recently obtained by The News Tribune, a Tacoma Police Department investigation over seven weeks appears to have gotten to the truth: Parker was run over by a school bus full of elementary-school children as she took her dog for a walk. She was crossing the street in front of her apartment, wearing a hood. It was dark out and rainy at the time.
In an interview with The News Tribune, the 24-year-old bus driver said she drove off in a panic that morning thinking she had hit a dog, frightening her passengers. She didn’t see the black dog until after the “thump.” She said she never saw the dog’s owner or thought she had struck a person.
The News Tribune is withholding her name because she has not been charged with a crime.
Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office spokesperson Adam Faber told The News Tribune via email Wednesday that the case “remains under review, with a few investigative details continuing.”
Parker’s mother, Brandee McLean, and stepfather Robert McLean also spoke with The News Tribune in an interview after reading the police reports.
Parker had pulmonary valve stenosis, the McLeans said. She had her first heart surgery when she was 4 days old and went on to have four others, the last when she was 18.
Parker’s autopsy revealed that her heart was almost cut in half when the bus hit her, according to the report.
“When you read that part in the report about her heart — her heart is something we protected and she protected for her whole life,” Robert McLean said.
Brandee added, her voice breaking: “It just hit so hard.”
Tacoma police reports reveal details
The bus that struck and killed Parker just steps from her apartment in Tacoma was operated by Harlow’s School Bus Service and carried students attending Impact | Commencement Bay Elementary, a charter school, police reports show.
Parker was taking her black Labrador mix, Oliver, out for a bathroom break near her apartment in the Hilltop neighborhood just before the collision on Oct. 4, her cousin Luke Mann previously told The News Tribune. Passersby found her lying in the road near the 800 block of South 11th Street, performed CPR and called Tacoma police, who responded at about 7:30 a.m. First responders also performed CPR but were unable to save her. She was declared dead at a local hospital.
She was officially identified by the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office on Oct. 10. The office later ruled her cause of death was multiple blunt-force injuries and her manner of death an accident, according to a release Oct. 16.
Tacoma police reports from Oct. 4 through Nov. 22 gave the following account of the investigation:
Police found Parker’s body in the eastbound lane of South 11th Street, near the southeast corner of South 11th Street and South I Street. She was located near Landmark Court Apartments at 818 S. 11th St.
Detectives believed she was hit by a vehicle but were unable to find evidence of an involved vehicle at the scene. While searching for surveillance video of the area, they learned that there were cameras pointed at South 11th Street at Landmark Court Apartments and another apartment complex at 811 S. 11th St.
The detectives visited Landmark Court Apartments on Oct. 9 to obtain the video footage. While there, they learned from the apartment complex maintenance supervisor that a tenant, Brittanee Parker, hadn’t been seen in the last few days. He also told them Parker had a large black dog.
Working with apartment staff and performing a welfare check on Parker’s studio unit, which was unlocked and vacant, investigators confirmed that Parker matched the description of the body they had found. They found a purse next to her bed containing her Washington driver’s license and her mailbox full of unopened mail.
They ruled out the possibility of Parker jumping off the building after checking that the windows in a vacant unit on the third floor remained intact and confirming that access to the rooftop was secured.
In surveillance video, the detectives saw a school bus traveling north on South I Street make a right turn onto South 11th Street. After the bus turned, a large black dog appeared running north, dragging its leash with no owner in sight.
The bus paused for several seconds after making the turn and then continued east on South 11th Street toward South Yakima Avenue, detectives saw in the video. They also noticed that two vehicles following the bus veered left, apparently to avoid something, after the bus turned onto South 11th Street.
Officers also reviewed surveillance video of the street from Tacoma Daycare and Preschool at 1113 S. I St., behind Landmark Court Apartments. Daycare staff told police that a school bus from Harlow’s, a student transportation company, is scheduled to stop in front of the daycare at 7:35 a.m. on school days to pick up students attending a charter school in Tacoma.
On Oct. 16, officers met with the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office pathologist who performed Parker’s autopsy and learned that the blunt-force trauma Parker received might have been “associated with something big and heavy.” Her injuries included severe damage to her lungs and heart and multiple broken ribs from both sides of her chest.
Parker also had bruising in the upper and outer part of her left upper thigh, the pathologist told officers.
Police returned to the area Oct. 18 and saw a school bus take the same route as seen in the video. They confirmed that the bus did not pause at the same spot that it paused for several seconds in the video, indicating that there was no designated stop at that point and that it must have stopped on Oct. 4 for another reason.
A license-plate check of the bus that police observed on Oct. 18 returned to a 2016 school bus registered to Harlow’s School Bus Service. Harlow’s is a privately-owned student transportation company that operates in five states, including Washington, according to the company’s website.
A Harlow’s representative told police that this specific bus, bus No. 5928, begins its route from a bus barn in Auburn, picks up students and drops them off at the Impact | Commencement Bay Elementary School in Tacoma at 1301 E. 34th St., then brings them home in the afternoons.
The Harlow’s representative shared school-bus movement logs and interior footage from inside bus No. 5928 with police.
The afternoon of Oct. 4, the representative received an email from the Commencement Bay school administrator asking if bus No. 5928 hit a dog on the morning route because kids on the bus had made comments about it when they got to school. The representative contacted the driver and learned that the driver saw a dog run out toward the front of the bus but didn’t think she hit it during her morning route Oct. 4.
The driver began training for her Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) in July and received it in September. She failed her first exam, passed her second and began driving on her own on Sept. 5.
That particular route is challenging and unpopular among the drivers because of the children’s difficult behavior on board, the representative told police.
‘What the heck was that?’
Interior bus video showed that the bus picked up children in front of the daycare on South I Street and then rolled to a stop at the stop sign approaching the intersection of South I Street and South 11th Street, according to the police reports. The driver wrote something on a clipboard while the bus was stopped.
Brittanee Parker and her dog were walking west on the sidewalk of South 11th Street toward the bus, while the driver allegedly was looking left. She and her dog walked to the corner of the intersection and faced north, about to cross South 11th Street, and waited as several cars drove through the intersection. The driver looked both left and right before activating her right turn signal.
As Parker and her dog stepped off the sidewalk and began crossing the street, the driver began to accelerate and turn rightward into their path. The video appeared to show that Parker was wearing a hood and did not look toward the left as the bus turned. Her head, visible in the right lower corner of the bus windshield, suddenly disappeared and there was the sound of a thump.
“As the school bus continues to make the right turn, I could see that the school bus bounces up and down and I could see some of the children go slightly airborne from their seats,” Tacoma police detective Young Song wrote in a police report.
The driver reportedly shouted, “What the heck was that,” and the bus bounced a second time, tossing some of the children toward the front of their seats again, as it moved east on South 11th Street. The bus began to slow as the driver and the children looked toward the left, and the driver cried out, “Oh my God, it was a dog.”
The bus came to a stop while the driver and children continued to look outside.
The driver “puts her hand over her mouth as if in shock and the children appeared to look scared, and I could hear one of the children make a comment, looks like he’s hurt,” Song wrote. “When a child asks (the driver), “are you ok”, (the driver) responds with ’I’m ok, but that was a dog you guys.’”
When a child asked the driver, “did you run over it,” the driver said, “yeah it ran into the street,” police reports show. The children on the bus began to scream and ask the driver more questions about the dog. The driver kept reassuring them that the dog ran off.
Video from the rear of the bus showed a dark figure in the back window, which appeared to be Parker on her hands and knees. Video from the middle of the bus showed a large dark dog running northwest across South 11th Street, dragging a leash, and a child saying, “Oh my God, she’s hurt.”
According to the report, the driver told police Oct. 18 she “thought it was a dog” and “if (she) had reaction time, (she) would have stopped.” The officer decided not to make a arrest at the time, as “it did not appear the collision was intentional and also appeared that (the driver) did not know that the school bus had struck a person” until the officer told her so on Oct. 18.
‘I have just been devastated,’ driver says
In a phone interview with The News Tribune on Tuesday, the driver said she and her family wanted to share their deepest condolences to Parker’s family.
“I have just been devastated for their loss,” she said.
The driver told The News Tribune that she did not see Parker or her dog on Oct. 4 before making the turn. It was “rainy, dark and wet” that morning, and the bus was on a hill, she said.
After the collision, she panicked. She looked in both mirrors and saw a black dog running away but decided to keep driving because she was in shock and she went into “fight or flight” mode with the children onboard, she told The News Tribune. Seeing the dog running away and that the kids were OK, she thought, “I’ve got to get these kids to school” and planned to alert her company’s dispatch and let them know what had happened when she arrived.
She said in order to leave the bus, she would have had to call another bus to take the children.
Asked if she thought the dog looked hurt when she saw it running away, she said she was in shock and didn’t know.
She wishes she had stopped and called dispatch right then, she said.
“If I had just waited, her family would not have had to wait six days to find her,” she told The News Tribune.
The driver said she is currently taking a leave of absence via a mutual agreement with Harlow’s School Bus Service.
Court records show the woman has been cited at least four times for driving violations in King County since 2017, including two for speeding and one for driving too fast for conditions. Her latest citation came on Sept. 25 of this year when she was cited for operating a motor vehicle without insurance in Renton. All but the most recent citation were paid in full, records show. The Renton case is pending.
The News Tribune reached out to Harlow’s School Bus Service multiple times to ask about its response to the incident but did not immediately hear back.
The News Tribune also reached out to Impact | Commencement Bay Elementary School via phone and email to ask if any support or resources have been provided to the children on the bus that hit Parker, and its plans for working with Harlow’s in the future.
Amy Kiyota, Impact Public Schools CEO, told The News Tribune via email Thursday morning, “Harlow’s is a contracted vendor that went through a public bidding process,” and that school staff have followed up with students and their families to offer support on an individualized basis.
She also clarified Friday via email: “(U)pon learning of this tragedy, we immediately communicated individually with every family who has a child on this bus route to notify them. Families also received the attached message updating them on Thursday, October 24, and information about ways to follow up if additional supports were needed.”
The attached screenshot showed a message Kiyota sent to families of students on the involved bus route, sharing information from Harlow’s that a pedestrian had died in the collision. It continued in part:
“No scholars were hurt, involved, or saw the incident. Following the incident, the driver involved was relieved of their duties with Impact as soon as the situation came to light.”
The safety and well-being of students remains their number one priority, and families with questions could email Kiyota directly, the message concluded.
Victim’s family still has many questions
Brandee and Robert McLean told The News Tribune on Wednesday they’re frustrated by the lack of answers they’ve been able to receive over the two months since Parker’s death.
Police told them they couldn’t share more information because the investigation was ongoing, Robert McLean said. The McLeans contacted a person at the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office on Wednesday and learned the case is pending after making repeated calls that weren’t returned. They’ve gotten no information about whether there will be charges pressed in the case.
“Really we’re just waiting on pins and needles and tears and waiting to try and find information out,” he said.
The McLeans live in California, and the distance from Tacoma is another barrier, though they’ve driven up multiple times since Parker’s death.
The family wants Parker’s dog Oliver, whom she loved and “took photos of . . . every single day,” Brandee McLean said. The family was told by the detective that he was collected by a local animal shelter, fixed and adopted out within that week because no one knew who the dog belonged to. They asked the detective if the dog could be recovered and have yet to hear back. They also don’t know which animal shelter took him in.
Asked about their memories of Parker, the McLeans said she was a dancer and loved working with children. She first started dancing when she was 3 and was invited when she was 12 to study with the Moscow Ballet in Russia, Brandee said. The family wasn’t able to send her to Russia, but they still have the certificate, and she danced with the Moscow Ballet every year from ages 5 to 12 when they came to perform the Nutcracker in the family’s local town.
Parker had just gotten the OK from her doctor to start dancing again after going through some medical issues, according to the McLeans. She was well on her way to getting her master’s in dance therapy and making ends meet by teaching classes at a YMCA in Tacoma and working at a grocery store.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story mischaracterized the breed and name of Parker’s dog. He is a black Labrador mix, and his name is Oliver, nicknamed Ollie. The story has also been updated to clarify the support that Impact Public Schools offered to families of children on the involved bus route.
This story was originally published December 6, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
