Dorsey High student confirmed dead in bus crash, L.A. Unified says

The Los Angeles Unified School District has received confirmation that a student from Dorsey High School was among those killed in Thursday’s fiery bus crash in Northern California, officials said.

Jennifer Bonilla, a senior at the school, had been unaccounted for since the collision between a FedEx truck and a tour bus filled with high school students heading to Humboldt State University.

The crash killed 10, including five students.

Supt. John Deasy said Saturday that Dorsey High Principal Reginald Sample spoke to Bonilla’s mother, who confirmed her daughter’s death.

Jennifer was a devoted, self-motivated student, who had a college scholarship on hand for the fall. She was a favorite among staff and administrators. She was the kind of learner, they said, who was easy to inspire.

“She’s one of those students who is bright and shiny and eager and ready to go,” said Sherlett Hendy Newbill, a teacher at Dorsey High School in the Crenshaw district.

Noah Lippe-Klein had recently written Jennifer a letter of recommendation for a scholarship that the teenager won. He praised “her ability to think critically about the world and her profound, college-level writing skills.”

Jennifer was active with eco-club on campus, participating in beach clean-ups and environment walks in Baldwin Hills.

She had been accepted to a number of schools in the University of California system and was excited about touring Humboldt State, Lippe-Klein said.

“I couldn’t imagine a kinder more selfless young woman who really had her head on her shoulders in a beautiful way, a model for the other students at Dorsey,” he said.

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