Judge sentences truck driver in deadly Hays CISD bus crash

BASTROP COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) — A Bastrop County judge sentenced the concrete pump truck driver involved in the deadly 2024 Hays Consolidated Independent School District school bus crash. 

Jerry Hernandez, 44, was charged with two counts of manslaughter and two counts of criminally negligent homicide. He entered a guilty plea to manslaughter, which the court accepted. Hernandez was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The state previously dismissed the criminally negligent homicide charges.

The March 22, 2024, crash on State Highway 21 killed 5-year-old Ulises Rodriguez Montoya and 33-year-old Ryan Wallace, who was driving in a car behind the bus.

“We don’t feel today justice was made,” Lilly Wallace, Ryan’s mom, said during the sentencing hearing. “He just started a career he worked so hard to achieve. You have broken our lives with no chance of repair. He died alone on the asphalt. Your sentence should be much longer.”

A couple of dozen people filled the Bastrop County courtroom Thursday afternoon, many of them there to address Hernandez and share how the crash has impacted their lives.

Talking to Hernandez, Ryan’s sister Diana said, “I want to be the one to tell you, you have single-handedly made this world a worse place. You will never know the depths of damage you have caused.”

“He had dreams and plans for the future. All of that was stolen by you,” Diana continued. “My brother was all that was good in the world.”

The bus was carrying 44 Tom Green Elementary pre-K students and 11 adults. A camera on the school bus captured the truck veering into its lane, causing it to roll over.

“I do hope that this feels like justice for the family,” Hays CISD Spokesperson Tim Savoy told KXAN in June. “But justice is one thing. On the other hand, there’s nothing that’s going to bring Ulysses back, and that’s going to be pain that the family has to endure forever.”

After the crash, Hernandez admitted to investigators that he had smoked marijuana and consumed cocaine within 24 hours of the crash, according to his arrest affidavit.