Bonnie Gilmore Sloan, 51, was charged with two counts of driving while impaired, two counts of hit and run, two counts of damage to property, misdemeanor child abuse and reckless driving.
She has been an employee of Lee County Schools since August 2005, most recently serving as a bus driver at East Lee and a cafeteria worker at Broadway Elementary School, said Sharon Spence, public information officer for the school district.
Spence said Sloan has been suspended pending the results of the investigation.
Parents and residents along the route said it was unsettling to learn about the allegations.
Sendy Cerrato, whose mailbox at her West Harrington Avenue home was demolished, said she called police after waking up and discovering the damage. She said the school district told her it would replace the mailbox.
Cerrato has two children including a second-grader at Broadway Elementary. She said she was shocked to hear of the charges.
“My first thought was ‘Oh my God that could be one of my kids’ bus drivers,’” Cerrato said. “It’s awful to think someone might be driving like that with kids on the bus.”
Ronald Lilly, who also lives on West Harrington Avenue, had a stepson on Sloan’s bus Thursday morning heading to East Lee.
Lilly said the eighth-grader first called his mother, who is a teacher at SanLee Middle School, from a cell phone on the bus to tell her about the driver’s behavior. He added his stepson said this wasn’t the first time Sloan had behaved erratically while driving.
“A lot of people could have been killed — and one is too many,” Lilly said.
Spence said parents of children who were on Sloan’s bus Thursday morning were called, and the district also sent home a letter.
Sloan’s arrest involved three of the local law enforcement agencies in Lee County. The incident was first reported by residents of Broadway, according to Broadway Police Chief Todd Hinnant. Hinnant said he responded Thursday morning to calls at West Harrington Avenue and Ruth Ann Lane, where he learned that a bus driver had been “driving erratically” and had struck two mailboxes while driving the route.
A short time later, Capt. John Holly of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office said he spotted a red Pontiac Grand Am on Broadway Road near East Lee Middle School.
“The driver was all over the road,” Holly said. “She ran completely off the right side of the road and then went left of center.”
Holly said he stopped the driver — later discovered to be Sloan — after she went through a green light, stopped her vehicle and backed up to make a left turn.
“As soon as I approached the vehicle, I suspected the driver was impaired,” he said. “She was incoherent, indifferent — she didn’t know what was going on.”
Holly said after making the stop, authorities determined Sloan had been driving the bus that was reported to have struck the mailboxes in Broadway. She had finished her route and was in her personal vehicle at the time Holly stopped her.
Holly said although a field sobriety test indicated Sloan was under the influence of some type of drug, there were no signs of alcohol. At that point, he called for the help of the Sanford Police Department’s drug recognition experts (DRE), who are trained to recognize signs of impairment from drugs other than alcohol.
Holly said the Sanford Police Department’s DRE officers determined through a variety of tests that Sloan was allegedly under the influence of prescription pills, including Percocet, a pain killer classified as a narcotic.
Holly said he found several Percocet pills in Sloan’s car. Although he said Sloan claimed to have a prescription for the pills, they were not in a prescription bottle.
“(Sloan) told us there were four or five different medications she was taking. But if we find out that she doesn’t in fact have a prescription for the pills, she could face additional drug offenses,” Holly said.
Sloan was released from custody Thursday on $10,000 unsecured bond.
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