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RUMFORD – Thirteen Gould Academy athletes traveling by bus on Saturday afternoon to a mountain-bike race at Carrabassett Valley Academy were shaken up but otherwise uninjured in a Route 2 accident.

According to Rumford Patrolman Scott Mills, the Bethel school students were headed east at 1:30 p.m. in a 14-passenger mini-bus towing a trailer loaded with mountain bikes when bus driver Peter Southam, 43, of Bethel, was distracted.

Mills said Southam drove into the rear of a 1997 Ford F150 pickup truck, operated by Joseph Boyle, 69, of Hopewell, Va. Boyle had stopped in the left lane to turn across the highway into the parking lot of Sam’s Italian Restaurant.

Boyle suffered a hand injury and was examined and treated by a Med-Care Ambulance medic.

Everyone involved was also examined, but only one of the youths complained of a headache, Mills said.

“Luckily, no one got hurt seriously,” Mills said. No citation was issued.

Mills estimated damage to the bus at $10,000; to the Ford, $4,000. Both had to be towed.

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