The votes are in and Kari Chopper’s name will be added to a national monument honoring teachers and support staff who lost their lives while serving children.
“In light of all the information we had, it looked like it was an accident not related to a health issue or not related to anything she caused,” said Carol Strickland, executive director of the National Teachers Hall of Fame in Kansas. “So her name will go on the wall.”
Chopper’s name will be added in the spring and will be part of a June 3 dedication. Chopper’s husband, Josh Chopper, and his family will be invited to the ceremony, which will be on the Emporia State University Campus next spring.
Chopper was killed Sept. 11 when the bus she was driving from Denver International Airport to Legacy High School in Broomfield crashed into a support beam at the airport. Fifteen students and three coaches also were injured.
Although Denver police investigated, . There was no sign the bus experienced mechanical trouble and toxicology tests on Chopper found no sign of drug or alcohol use. Chopper died of blunt force injuries, however, an autopsy found that she had an enlarged heart and may have passed out before the crash. But the autopsy findings don’t definitively show that any health problems led to the crash.
So far, 118 names are part of the memorial, dating back to the first school massacre in 1764 when schoolmaster Enoch Brown and nine of his students were killed and scalped by Native Americans.
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