By Jeremy W. Steele
The Cincinnati Enquirer

MILFORD - Staff at a small Clermont County group home are working to help residents grieve after a 29-year-old woman who lived there was killed Thursday in a bus crash.

Tara L. Davis, a mentally disabled woman who lived at the Pine Ridge/Pine Valley group home in Williamsburg with seven others, died after the bus taking her and three other MRDD clients to swim crashed into a concrete trestle on Ohio 28.

Police said Davis was thrown from the bus. Two of the three other passengers were released after being treated at Bethesda North Hospital. A third was still hospitalized Friday with non-life-threatening injuries, said MRDD spokeswoman Lisa Davis, who is not related to Tara Davis.

In a statement released Friday, staff at the group home where Tara Davis lived said: "It was a tragedy and loss for all of us. We will miss Tara deeply because she was like a member of the family."

"They're just working hard to get everyone through it," Lisa Davis said of the home's staff. "It's quite small and quite family-oriented. They're taking all the steps they can to help everyone through the grieving process."

Robert Baker, 61, of Bethel, the driver of the Clermont Transportation Connection minibus, has been put on paid administrative leave while police investigate the cause of the crash, Clermont County spokeswoman Kathy Lehr said. The county operates the transportation service.

Baker has cooperated with investigators and has taken an alcohol and drug test, Lehr said.

Milford police are still conducting interviews with witnesses and are awaiting an Ohio State Highway Patrol report on the crash.

"After we gather everything together, we'll probably be meeting with the prosecutor's office sometime next week," Milford Police Sgt. Asa Burroughs said.

Baker told police he hit a curb under a railroad bridge and then ran into the concrete wall supporting the bridge.

E-mail jsteele@enquirer.com