A radiology technician with the UNC health care system was struck and killed by a bus on Monday near the clinic where she worked.

Valerie Hughes, 33, of 1148 Strader Drive in Burlington, died at UNC Hospitals after the accident, which happened about 4 p.m. at the corner of South Columbia Street and Mason Farm Road.

Her coworkers at the Ambulatory Care Center were distraught, said Karen McCall, a hospital spokeswoman.

"She had a wonderful rapport with her patients and acted as a role model for new staff," McCall said. "Several of her supervisors said she would be missed so much."

South Columbia is a major north-south route in and out of Chapel Hill, and traffic is usually heavy at that time of day.

Steve Spade, director of Chapel Hill Transit, said that the bus was turning left onto Columbia Street from Mason Farm when it struck Hughes.

Hughes was trapped under the bus, police said. Few other details have been released.

The bus driver, whom two officials identified as James Willie Orr, 65, was put on administrative leave while police and Chapel Hill Transit investigate. Such leaves are normal when serious accidents occur, said Spade.

Hughes had grown up in Alamance County, her father, Carl Hughes of Burlington, said. She graduated from Alamance Christian School in Graham, then from UNC-Greensboro, and worked in radiology at hospitals in Greensboro and Wilmington before coming to UNC Hospitals about a year ago.

She loved UNC basketball and sometimes attended games, he said.

"Mainly, though, she was a workaholic," Carl Hughes said. "She just loved to work, and she just liked to help people."

Valerie Hughes' survivors include her father, her mother, Susan, and a brother, Steven, 35, of Graham.

CAMPAIGN SIGN SHOCKS NEIGHBOR

After Shawn Turschak saw two sets of McCain-Palin signs disappear from his yard within hours of being planted, he took steps to protect the latest pair. He ran wires from his house and hooked the signs into a power source for an electric pet fence. Then he mounted a surveillance camera in a nearby tree and wired it to a digital recorder.

Tuesday afternoon, the camera saw this: A 9-year-old neighbor trotting up with an Obama-Biden sign, grabbing a handful of volts as he touched a McCain-Palin sign, then running back the way he had come.

A few minutes later, the boy's father, Andrew Noble, was at Turschak's door, demanding an explanation from Turschak's 13-year-old daughter, who called her parents on the phone to say a man was yelling at her. The Turschaks hurried home and received another visitor: an Orange County sheriff's deputy.

The boy's mother, Johanna Gisladottir, said she and many neighbors in the Oak Crest subdivision south of Chapel Hill thought the corner where the signs were posted was community property.

Turschak, who has a degree in electrical engineering, said he tested the shock on himself. Under each sign was a yellow notice warning that they were electrified.

The deputy who investigated said the pet-fence setup probably was legal, Turschak said, but perhaps more trouble than it was worth. Turschak said Wednesday morning that he would pull the plug on the signs. The camera, though, stayed.

And Wednesday afternoon while the Turschaks were at a daughter's soccer game, it captured an angry-looking woman striding up.

"We got home and both signs were gone," he said. "Broad daylight."