Huntsville, Ala. – It was the first day of the school week, and Lee High School students laughed and joked as their bus chugged along a highway to classes at a downtown tech center.
Then a car pulled up next to the bus, possibly sideswiping it.
The next moments Monday morning were terrifying and deadly, as recounted by police and students: the bus swerving, plowing through the concrete overpass railing, plunging about 30 feet off Interstate 565 and crashing nose-first on Church Street below.
Two teenage girls, Christina Collier, 18, and Nicole Ford, 17, died at the scene. A third, Tanesha Hill, 17, died at a hospital. At least three more people, including the bus driver, were in critical condition.
“They were falling on each other. People were screaming, yelling, crying,” said LaWanda Jefferson, 16, who suffered fractures to her left arm and cuts and bruises to her face.
Jefferson said that while on the bus, she saw a car speed by to the right, and suddenly she was flying across the bus.
“The bus went to the side, and I guess it went over,” she said.
Called to the scene by wailing children on cellphones, many parents were angry that police held them back or had no information. At the hospital, some collapsed in tears amid more confusion.
“You come in and you hear loud screams, people falling on the floor,” said Doris Harris, who went to check on Jefferson at Huntsville Hospital, where more than 30 students and the bus driver were taken. “I was hysterical. It’s so loud with the talking, the noise. Everyone was saying, ‘Did they call my baby’s name?’ I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
Police Chief Rex Reynolds said a Toyota Celica driven by another Lee High School student apparently came close to or struck the bus.
Investigators have spoken to the driver and other witnesses. The damaged car was still at the crash site Monday afternoon.
Students on the bus, which was not equipped with seat belts, were screaming when rescue workers arrived.
“They were thrown all over the bus,” said Huntsville Fire Chief Dusty Underwood.
Some had to be extracted from the crumpled front of the vehicle, he said.
The horror of the wreck was compounded by the inability of hospital staff to identify some of the more severely injured students who were unable to talk and had no identification on them, hospital officials said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the wreck. The agency has said that school buses are designed to protect occupants without the need for seat belts.
