A longtime Vicksburg Warren School District bus driver who had just dropped off students died on his way home this morning after suffering an apparent heart attack, Warren County Coroner Doug Huskey said.

Thomas “Tommy” Gordon Jr., 70, was headed home from his morning bus route at 8:10 a.m. when his bus left the road in the 6400 block of Halls Ferry Road and slid into a ditch, hitting a mailbox along the way, Huskey said.

“There was no indication that the wreck caused the death,” Sheriff Martin Pace said.

The bus “eased off” the right side of the road at a slow speed and bumped a mailbox, authorities said.

Gordon was a 1958 graduate of St. Aloysius High School, who worked for years in his family automotive repair shop on Grove Street.

He worked as the school district’s assistant transportation supervisor from 1990 to 2003, then began driving school buses, said Shannon Daniels, secretary for Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Duran Swinford, who was in meetings this morning.

“He was a sweet man,” Daniels said, “just a very sweet man.”

No one was available at the schools’ transportation office to say which school Gordon had just left.

Gordon is survived by two sons and his wife, Rosemary.

Fisher Funeral Home has charge of arrangements, Huskey said.