Stephen Fibelkorn stood on the sidewalk at the corner of Broad and High streets Friday morning and surveyed the wreckage of the devastating crash. There was a school bus involved and that worried him the most. "I said to someone, "Oh, God, I hope none of those kids got hurt or that some parent loses a child today." And then he went on to his scheduled 10:30 a.m. meeting at the James A. Rhodes State Office Tower just a few yards away.

Stephen Fibelkorn stood on the sidewalk at the corner of Broad and High streets Friday morning and surveyed the wreckage of the devastating crash . There was a school bus involved and that worried him the most.

�I said to someone, �Oh, God, I hope none of those kids got hurt or that some parent loses a child today.�?� He prayed for everyone involved, and then he went on to his scheduled 10:30 a.m. meeting at the Rhodes Tower just yards away.

He texted his wife, Mary, and his 21-year-old daughter, Stephanie, because they both work Downtown. There�s been a crash, he told them. You OK?

He didn�t hear back from Stephanie, but that was all right; she frequently let her phone battery run down, and her parents were used to her electronic silence.

There was no way that Mr. Fibelkorn could have known, of course, that Stephanie � the younger of the two Fibelkorn daughters, with the mathematical mind and the joyful heart � had been hit. No way he could have known that the out-of-control and speeding pickup truck that had slammed into that bus and pushed it onto that sidewalk had killed his daughter, ripping apart his family and shattering their souls.

As Mr. Fibelkorn spoke of his daughter yesterday, his mind was somewhere else. In his head, he was still at that corner. His face contorted with pain as he wondered what might have been.

�Maybe I could have held her hand,� he said. �Maybe I could have held her for a while one last time. How do you explain what no one can possibly begin to understand?�

Yesterday, police were still trying to figure out why 61-year-old Terrance Trent drove that pickup so wildly for blocks west on E. Broad Street before running the red light at High Street and crashing into the Groveport Madison school bus about 10 a.m.

Sgt. Brooke Wilson of the Columbus Police Division�s accident investigation unit said officers talked to Trent before he went into surgery on Friday afternoon and that he was cooperative. But what, exactly, had been happening inside the pickup is still under investigation, Wilson said.

A passenger in the truck, 51-year-old Mamie Adams, was listed in serious condition yesterday at OhioHealth Grant Medical Center, and bus driver Brenda Detty was listed as stable, police said.

None of the three children on the bus was hurt. No criminal charges have been filed.

Stephanie, a mechanical-engineering student in her third year at Ohio State University, had been interning with the city of Columbus. She was walking with her boss, Bill Lewis, 58, the city�s chief mobility engineer, when they both were hit.

Wilson said Lewis, who is a beloved and longtime city employee, remains in very critical condition.

For the Fibelkorns, that makes this all the more difficult. Stephanie put everyone before herself, and she wouldn�t have wanted anyone to suffer. Even the truck driver.

�Steffie would have just wanted to know if he was OK,� her dad said.

She was, her parents say, at a sort of crossroads. She had always dreamed of being a Disney � imagineer� � what the fabled company calls its innovators, designers and creators. She had spent eight months at Disney World working as part of its college program. She had come home in May and had a ticket to head back on Wednesday to work at the park over the holidays.

But more recently, she had been exploring the Peace Corps. She was trying to figure out what was next for her.

�We were encouraging her to stay. She only had one more year of college,� Mr. Fibelkorn said. � We wanted her to stay here so she�d be safe.�

Stephanie had a brilliant mind, her father said, and she had been designing and building things since she was a toddler. They found her with her father�s tools at age 3, apparently trying to make something out of the wooden floor. But what she always wanted more than anything was to spread happiness.

�She didn�t have hatred in her heart for anyone,� Mr. Fibelkorn said. �Everything she did was to make the moment in front of her the best it could be. She seized joy.�

Professor Sandra Metzler, who had Stephanie in an 8 a.m. engineering class this semester, said her spirit was contagious. She never missed a class and always sat in the front row, directly in front of Metzler�s lectern.

�All I could see when I looked out was her smile,� Metzler said. �She never had a bad day.�

When they spoke of their daughter yesterday, the Fibelkorns could not help but point to the family Christmas tree. Each year, each of the daughters (her older sister, Jessica, is in the U.S. Navy) picks out a new and special ornament to symbolize the kind of year she�s had.

Stephanie put this year�s near the top. It is a glass globe filled with the wispy seeds from dandelion puffballs. The kind of seeds you make wishes on.

�This was a year of transition for her, a year of wishes and hopes,� said her mom. �And no matter how it all worked out, she just wanted to spread wishes and happiness and joy to everyone."

The Fibelkorns met with Schoedinger Funeral Home directors yesterday and tried to finalize arrangements. But it couldn�t be done so quickly. No one had planned for this, after all. Theirs is not a family that spoke much of death, Mr. Filberkorn said, and certainly not that of the children.

But Stephanie had told him one time that should it ever happen, she knew what she wanted done.

�She said, �Dad, when I die, I want to be shot up in the air like a firework and be scattered in the air all over Disney,�??� he said, dropping his head into his hands to weep. �I don�t know if I can make that happen, but I can tell you this: She celebrated every day. And whatever we do, it will celebrate her. She would want to make everyone smile.�

hzachariah@dispatch.com

@hollyzachariah