Winter Haven High student among two killed in Polk County school bus crash
FOX 13 Tampa Bay's report, sourced to the Polk County Sheriff's Office, became the station's most watched upload of the day, ahead of the sheriff's own press conference.
FOX 13 Tampa BayStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 276,690 views a day, 31 times a normal first day on this channel (8,861).
Student killed in Polk County school bus crash: PCSO
A Winter Haven High School student was one of two people killed Monday morning when, investigators say, a vehicle crossed the center line and struck a school bus, setting off a chain reaction crash involving several other vehicles. FOX 13 Tampa Bay's short report, credited in its title to the Polk County Sheriff's Office, passed 200,000 views within 13 hours. A new video from the station usually ends its whole first day below 9,000.
The station stayed with the story through the day. It streamed Sheriff Grady Judd's press conference live, and that video also drew several times the channel's usual first-day audience. Judd has led the Polk County Sheriff's Office since 2005 and is a familiar figure at the podium when something serious happens in the county. A follow-up report says the student was a 10th-grade girl.
The comment section filled far faster than usual. A typical FOX 13 video collects a handful of comments on its first day, and this one had hundreds within hours. Most are condolences for the families and for the students who saw the crash. A school bus driver of two decades writes about how drivers behave around buses, and several parents say a bus ride is the thing they worry about most.
The same Monday, meteorologist Valerie Mills's look at a possible tropical depression in the Gulf also ran well ahead of usual. She expects strong wind shear to tear apart anything that forms before it reaches Florida, though rain is likely either way.
On Tuesday, the station went back to Winter Haven to hear from students and parents.
Published on Trari
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- Channel
- FOX 13 Tampa Bay
- Subscribers
- 1,080,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 2,819,634
- Channel views, pace per day
- 368,644 (on a normal day: 310,618)
- Video published
- October 5, 2026
- Video views so far
- 202,495 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 276,690
The numbers
The figures below show how far the station's crash report ran past a usual first day, and how the rest of the channel's day compared.
