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6 dead in bus crash
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Staff, wire reports

Friday, March 02, 2007

Photos: View pictures from the crash
ATLANTA — A charter bus carrying a college baseball team from Bluffton, Ohio plunged off a highway ramp early Friday and slammed into the pavement below, killing six people, injuring 29 and scattering sports equipment across the road, authorities said.

The bus, carrying the team from Bluffton University, a Mennonite-affiliated school south of Toledo, toppled off the Northside Drive bridge onto a pickup truck on Interstate 75 in clear, pre-dawn weather, police spokesman Joe Cobb said.

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At least six of the 35 people aboard were killed and others were injured.

Two brothers who graduated from Southeastern High School in Clark County were aboard the bus but survived the crash, their father said. Greg Ramthun said his son A.J. suffered a broken collar bone and possible internal bleeding. His son Mike had his leg pinned in the wreckage but was stable at a hospital where he was being treated.

Two graduates of Tri-County North High School in Preble County are also on the team roster. Austin Gray was aboard the bus, according to a Tri-County North official, but his condition was unknown. Cody Holp also is on the roster, but it was unknown if he was on the bus.

Newton High School graduate Matt Ferguson is a member of the Bluffton junior varsity baseball team and was not with the team, according to Newton Principal Andrew White. "From the information we received, Matt was not on the bus," White said.

Dr. Leon Haley, a spokesman for Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, said 19 male students were being treated there. Three were in critical condition, and all but two students were awake and talking, he said. Doctors were checking them for broken bones, he said.

"All things considered they are pretty calm ... They are very aware of what's going on," Haley said. He said the driver was not taken to Grady. Three injured people were taken to Piedmont Hospital and seven to Atlanta Medical Center, Haley said.

Officials at the three hospitals said 28 of the 29 people being treated were of college age. The age of one injured person, at Piedmont, could not immediately be determined, they said.

A university spokeswoman, Jill Duling, confirmed the bus that crashed was carrying the team, but said she could not provide any other information. The school canceled Friday classes and scheduled a press conference for later Friday.

The team, which went 17-21 last season, was scheduled to play its first game of the season in Sarasota, Fla., on Saturday against Eastern Mennonite College of Harrisonburg, Va. It had eight games scheduled in Fort Myers, Fla., beginning Monday.

Firefighters were pulling people through the roof of the bus, which was on its side. Sports equipment was scattered along the interstate.

Cobb said the bus was coming southbound on I-75. When it went off the bridge, it landed in the southbound lanes of the interstate, blocking all four lanes. Five fire trucks and at least three dozen firefighters were at the scene.

Danny Lloyd, 57, of Frostburg, Md., said he was on his way to Florida when the falling bus landed on his pickup truck.

"It looked to me like a big slab of concrete falling down," Lloyd said. "I didn't recognize it was a bus. I think when I saw the thing coming, I think I closed my eyes and stepped on the gas."

He said the impact broke his windshield, pushed his truck into the concrete and wrecked the front bumper. He was not injured.

Bluffton University, 50 miles south of Toledo in a small farming community, has 1,150 students and is affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA.

Wow..

My wife woke me up this morning sobbing in tears...

I hated to hear this had happened this morning.

Um, because the story is sad perhaps.....

or maybe she knew somebody on the bus or knew the family?...

Thoughts and prayers to those involved and their families.

I really hate to see anything like this.

This really hit hard at the college I go to. (Muskingum College in Ohio) because the head coach was an assistant to the current Baseball coach. They were pretty close and were looking forward to playing against one another in Fort Myers as Muskingum is also on their way down there now. There was also a player on this bus that I played high school ball against. Both he and the coach were injured, but fortunately are still alive. I feel very bad for the families and friends, as well as Bluffton students.

j/c

Wow, one of the dead is from town 12 miles from me........and a neighbor kid, who's a freshman is on the "team", but didn't make the traveling team so he wasn't there......wow!

God bless the dead.......

This is all over the news here too, since they were heading here Monday for a tournament, sad, sad news.

Prayers go out to the families. It's a sad reminder that you just never know how long you have, so be sure to spend time with the ones you love whenever you get the chance.

Gongrats on having the dumbest response.............ever.

Just saw a computerized reinactment of the crash. The driver mistook the off-ramp for a freeway lane and went off the overpass at full speed. Unbelievably [censored]-poor design. Someone's getting sued over this and rightfullly so.

This was so unfortunate and sad. Atlanta is a tricky city to drive through but I never imagined something like this to hit so close to home. My friend Rachael is one of the students there and she's pretty shook up.

My thoughts are with the victims, families, friends, faculty, and communities. It must be tough.

I did hear on the news last night that one of the airlines is offering free flights for family members to go down there. That really touched me.

5th student dies from bus crash injuries
University of Ohio athlete succumbs after deadly Atlanta bridge plunge

The Associated Press
Updated: 9:52 a.m. ET March 9, 2007
ATLANTA - A college baseball player pulled from the wreckage of a bus crash that killed several of his teammates died of his injuries Friday, raising the death toll to seven, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Zach Arend, 18, had been in critical condition since the crash last Friday.

He died about 6 a.m., said Grady Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Denise Simpson. Arend’s grandmother, Ann Miller, had said the young man suffered chest and abdominal injuries, a fractured pelvis and collapsed lungs.

Four of his Bluffton University teammates, the bus driver and the driver’s wife were killed when the charter bus went off an overpass in Atlanta and crashed onto the Interstate 75 pavement below. More than two dozen others aboard were injured.

The team’s coach, James Grandey, was listed in stable condition in the intensive care unit at Piedmont Hospital Friday. Two players remained hospitalized at Grady Memorial, one in critical condition and one in fair condition, Simpson said. Another player was in stable condition at Atlanta Medical Center.

Investigators have said the driver apparently mistook an exit ramp for a highway lane, continued along it without stopping at a “T” intersection at the top of the ramp and then went over the edge.

Team member Kyle King, talking to reporters from his hospital room earlier this week, said most of the players were asleep when he heard the bus driver’s wife scream, the tires screech and the bus hit the concrete barrier.


‘Cody wanted people to smile’
On Thursday, hundreds of mourners gathered in the Ohio towns of Lima and Lewisburg for the funerals of his Bluffton teammates Tyler Williams and Cody Holp, both 19.

Williams’ cleats and glove rested among the flowers at Philippian Missionary Baptist Church in Lima. Outside were pictures from his life, many showing the outfielder in uniform.

“Tyler was already making a difference in this world,” Bluffton President James Harder said. “A difference that will now be missing.”

Sixty-five miles away in Lewisburg, mourners held copies of a poem Holp had written that read: “I hope to change the world when I die so when looked upon they say he was a good man.”

“Cody wanted people to smile, so he started the contagion by smiling all the time himself,” the Rev. Mike Pratt said. “That’s what makes him so unforgettable and his legacy enduring.”

The crash also killed the bus driver and his wife, Jerome and Jean Niemeyer, and players David Betts and Scott Harmon.

The team had been scheduled to play Eastern Mennonite University in Florida. Instead, players from the school in Harrisonburg, Va., attended a memorial service.


© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17534796/