DALLAS — The way 5-year-old Ulises Rodriguez Montoya smiled melted hearts.
And the way he died absolutely breaks them.
The Tom Green Elementary pre-K student died when the school bus he was riding in crashed in Bastrop County on March 22. Police say a cement truck hit the bus, causing it to roll over on Highway 21.
A passenger vehicle was also involved in the crash.
The students were returning to school from a field trip to the zoo and parents knew the bus they were on didn't have seat belts.
One mom told Austin TV station KVUE that all she could think of when she learned a crash had happened was her son “flying around on the bus.”
“There’s no excuse for this death to happen. Zero. None,” said Steve Forman, a Texas dad who lobbied the state for years to require seat belts on school buses.
His daughter survived a March 2006 crash that killed two of her classmates from a Beaumont High School.
Forman and other parents advocated and pressured lawmakers. Their efforts worked – first with a 2007 law offering funding to districts to add buses with belts and eventually with a tougher 2017 law requiring all new buses to be purchased with belts.
But there are a couple of clauses.
Buses that were bought before 2017 and are still in use do not have to be retrofitted.
The bus Ulises Montoya was in was from 2011, according to Hays C-I-S-D.
Seat belts can increase the cost of a bus by thousands of dollars, and the law allows districts that can’t afford the cost to buy buses without belts -- as long as they take a public vote on it.
“Spend the money,” Forman said.
His daughter still bears scars and trauma.
When she became a mother, he said she had to learn how to manage the permanent damage done to her arm in 2006. He said many victims with "non-life-threatening injuries" actually experience life-changing circumstances.
“My daughter was underneath the bus for two hours and they had to lift it off of her. But she was blacked out the entire time," he said. “My daughter’s best friend who was trying to pull her out from under the bus to this day has nightmares.”
According to the Texas Education Agency, there were 1,634 school bus accidents in Texas during the 2022-2023 school year.
Those crashes involved 13,928 students and 589 adults.
243 students were injured – six seriously.
39 adults were injured – three seriously.
Hays C-I-S-D says the DPS investigation will reveal whether seat belts could have saved lives or prevented injuries in the crash that killed Montoya. But the district will consider accelerating the pace of plans to replace 40 buses that don’t have belts with new ones that do.
Denton ISD recently bought 79 new buses after voters approved a referendum that included $11 million for them.
At the time of the vote, 31% of the district's fleet was more than 17 years old.
In February 2024, Denton began gradually phasing in the new buses which have seat belts.