http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2785357

 

Friday, March 2, 2007
Bus carrying team from Bluffton University crashes

ESPN.com news services

ATLANTA -- A charter bus carrying a college baseball team from Ohio plunged off a highway ramp early Friday and slammed into the pavement below, killing at least six people 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 Interstate 75 in clear, pre-dawn weather, police spokesman Joe Cobb said.

 

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

 

"It's bad, I know that," he said. "It's hard to describe. The bus is completely annihilated."

 

Robin Bowlus, a college spokeswoman, said she couldn't confirm whether the bus was the one that left Bluffton at 7 p.m. on Thursday but she hasn't been able to reach anyone who had been on the team bus by cell phone.

 

The team 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.

 

Cobb said 12 to 15 people were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that nine passengers were seriously injured and about 20 were "walking wounded."

Firefighters were pulling people through the roof of the bus, which was on its side. Sports equipment was scattered along the interstate. Some of the luggage scattered on the road was labeled Bluffton University Baseball, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

 

Witnesses told the newspaper that the bus, which exited I-75 at the Northside Drive HOV exit, appeared to lose control, crossed Northside at an angle and crashed through the bridge barrier onto the southbound lanes of I-75.

 

The accident blocked all southbound four lanes of the highway. 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, has 1,150 students and is affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA.

 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.