Charges reduced for bus driver

By Elise Franco

efranco@vindy.com

Canfield

A substitute bus driver’s impaired-driving charge was reduced to failure to control after the results of a urine test showed her blood-alcohol content was 0.00.

Assistant Prosecutor Nick Modarelli said Geraldine Banks, 65, of North Jackson, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Mahoning County Area Court in Canfield to failure to control. The charge stemmed from a Jan. 25 incident where Banks clipped an empty bus that afternoon.

She was pulling her bus out of the Canfield School District bus garage, which is attached to the police station on Lisbon Street.

Banks was originally charged by Canfield police with “operating a commercial motor vehicle while having a measurable or detectable amount of alcohol or controlled substance,” after the officer who arrived on the scene said he detected alcohol on her breath, according to police reports.

A hand-held Breathalyzer test administered at the scene showed Banks’ BAC to be 0.021, according to a police report.

She was required by police to give a urine sample to determine if any amount of drugs or alcohol were in her system, and Modarelli said those tests came back negative.

“They took her urine instead of a breath test, and it came back no alcohol, no drugs,” he said. “The charge was amended to reckless operation for the crash on the property there.”

Modarelli said they were working with the evidence they had.

“You go with what you think you have, and when the evidence comes back and you don’t have it, you go to plan B,” he said.

Police Chief Chuck Colucci said several hours passed between Banks’ initial breath test and when she gave the urine sample. He said a person’s BAC drops 0.015 grams every hour.

Atty. J. Gerald Ingram, Bank’s lawyer, said the test results speak for themselves.

“She clipped a mirror, but she certainly was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs,” he said. “It was unfair for anyone to insinuate that she was.”

Banks said she’s unhappy with the way she was portrayed in the media and by police throughout the ordeal.

“I would like to say that I’m not what I was projected to be,” she said. “I don’t know what they smelled, but it wasn’t alcohol.”

She added: “When you drive for 20 or more years it makes you think back on all the families and kids you drove and what they must think of me now.”