From the time she puts her foot down on the road until the time that bus strikes her is about six seconds,\u201d says an attorney for the family of Jenna Menias<\/p>\n
Jenna Menias.<\/span>Credit :<\/span><\/p>\n the Menias Family<\/p>\n For Michael Menias, the morning of Sept. 8 started out just like other day: he dropped off his 6-year-old daughter Jenna at the stop where her school bus would pick her up and take her to Grand Prairie Elementary in Frankfort, Ill.<\/p>\n \u201cI told her, \u2018I love you,\u2019 \u201d Menias tells PEOPLE. \u201cThat\u2019s what I tell her every time she leaves me, \u2018I love you and I\u2019ll see you later.\u2019 She had that big smile on her face that morning.\u201d<\/p>\n But their family\u2019s life changed forever that afternoon.<\/p>\n Just seconds after Jenna stepped off the bus in order to cross the street to get home, she was fatally struck by the same vehicle.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all using therapy at this time,\u201d Menias says. \u201cThat\u2019s all we can do right now, honestly. Just keep going to the memories that we had with Jenna and hanging onto them, looking at a lot of the videos and the pictures that we had together.\u201d<\/p>\n Now Menias is suing two school districts, alleging wrongful death.<\/p><\/div>\n According to the complaint, on Sept. 8, Lincoln-Way Community High School District 210 provided transportation services for Frankfort School District 157-C, which includes Jenna\u2019s school.<\/p>\n Attorney Daniel Kirschner, a partner at Corboy & Demetrio who represents the family, says in the weeks before Jenna\u2019s death, her mom emailed District 157 expressing her concern that the bus route and drop-off procedures \u2014 which required Jenna to disembark from the vehicle hundreds of feet from her house \u2014 were not safe.<\/p>\n As explained in the complaint, Jenna lived on a dead-end road, which meant that at some point the bus would have to turn around and drive back down the road in the other direction to continue on its regular route.<\/p>\n Their attorney says that Jenna\u2019s regular bus driver was usually accommodating and dropped Jenna off in front of her house if her parents or brother were not present to pick her up from the designated stop \u2014 but the complaint alleges that on Sept. 8, Jenna was allowed to get off at the stop unaccompanied by a substitute driver.<\/p>\n According to video recording obtained by the law firm representing Jenna\u2019s family, which Kirschner described to PEOPLE, as Jenna got off the bus that day, she made a wide circle to get around the vehicle\u2019s crossing arm.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s at the tip of the extension of that arm crossing in front of the bus when [the driver] retracts it and starts to move forward,\u201d Kirschner says.<\/p>\n According to Kirschner, the video allegedly showed that the substitute driver was looking at the bus roster and route when the vehicle began to move forward and then proceeded \u201cto run over Jenna.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the time she puts her foot down on the road until the time that bus strikes her is about six seconds,\u201d alleges Kirschner.<\/p>\n Jenna was taken to the hospital where she succumbed to her injuries.<\/p>\n When reached by PEOPLE for comment, spokespersons for both school districts extended their sympathies to Jenna\u2019s loved ones but said they could not provide additional comment due to the pending litigation.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom day one, the goal of the family…is to make sure that this never happens to another family,\u201d Kirschner tells PEOPLE, \u201cto figure out not just the one or two or three or eight reasons of what went wrong and why this happened, but what \u2014 and perhaps legislatively \u2014 could be in place to ensure that this does not happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe was always smiling,\u201d he says. \u201cShe had a beautiful way of making people feel welcome. She was never shy to talk to others. She would literally talk to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n She also loved her dog and her dad says that when she wasn\u2019t at school, the pair were never far apart. \u201cShe could talk about Oscar forever,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n Jenna would have turned 7 years old on Sept. 25, and the family was planning a birthday celebration for her.<\/p>\n \u201cWe always have two different plans,\u201d Menias says. \u201cWe were going to take her to the Wolf Lodge over in Gurnee. Then after that, we were going to have a birthday party in our house with her friends.\u201d<\/p>\n As for what he would like people to remember Jenna for, it would be her infectious personality.<\/p>\n \u201cShe loved everybody,\u201d Menias says. \u201cShe was always happy. She was a beautiful little angel. That\u2019s what I want people to remember.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the time she puts her foot down on the road until the time that bus strikes her is about six seconds,\u201d says an attorney for the family of Jenna Menias Jenna Menias.Credit : the Menias Family For Michael Menias, the morning of Sept. 8 started out just like other day: he dropped off his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1827,"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions\/1827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alirthmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}