A Mineola man was sentenced Thursday to five to 15 years in prison for crashing his cement truck into a school bus, killing its driver and wounding five passengers, four of them children, in Matinecock two years ago.
Raymond Ragen had been convicted in April at Nassau County court of second-degree manslaughter and assault. He was acquitted of vehicular homicide of vehicular manslaughter charges.
Prosecutors said that the 46-year-old was driving a 13-foot-high cement truck weighing nearly 40,000 pounds eastbound on Oyster Bay Road when he crashed into a 10-foot-high Long Island Rail Road overpass on July 23, 2012.
The truck careened into oncoming traffic and crashed head-on with a small school bus carrying special-needs children home from summer camp, killing the driver, 45-year-old Jorge Guevara of Locust Valley.
A 64-year-old man serving as a bus attendant was seriously injured and now needs a cane to walk. The four children on the bus who were between the ages of six and nine suffered mostly minor injuries, but one has permanent facial scarring and a detached lip.
Authorities said that GPS data from the truck found that Ragen was aware that his truck would not fit beneath the overpass because he had driven up to the bridge hours earlier and was forced to turn around.
