Bus driver charged with DWI after stranding St. Louis basketball team

Dave DeLuca

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Bus driver charged with DWI after stranding St. Louis basketball team image

As the Saint Louis Univ. men's basketball team readied to make the long trip back to campus following a 70-55 road loss to St. Bonaventure on Wednesday, Billikens players and staff discovered a problem: Their team bus and driver were nowhere to be found. 

It turns out Grand Tour bus driver Linda L. Edmister, 56, left the team at Bonaventure's Reilly Center in Olean, N.Y., and had to be tracked down by New York state troopers in Randolph, N.Y., about 36 miles away. Edmister failed field sobriety tests and was arrested on a charge of driving while intoxicated, authorities said. 

A breath test showed her blood alcohol content was .22 percent — more than five times the legal limit for drinking and driving while operating a commercial vehicle in New York.

Police also found alcohol on the bus.

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Stu Durando, Billikens beat writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, tweeted that the team found the location of the bus by tracking coach Travis Ford's iPad, which he left onboard.

The team's Twitter account shared a few pictures of players playing cards and kicking back in recliners while officials worked on locating the bus.

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Saint Louis assistant athletic director Brian Kunderman did not want to speculate on why the team's bus driver left, but confirmed that it was, indeed, the team's regular driver who left without them.

"We have heard that she was taken into custody," Kunderman told Sporting News late Wednesday. "We have recovered all our belongings and are on the way to the airport to catch our charter flight home."

The team ended up getting delayed an hour at the arena, and had about a 37-mile drive to Bradford, Pa., to catch its charter flight at the Bradford Regional Airport.

Dave DeLuca

Dave DeLuca is an intern at Sporting News and a recent graduate of Buffalo State. He's a former intern and digital editor at The Buffalo News and executive editor of The Record, Buffalo State's student-run newspaper.