Atlanta – A charter bus carrying a college baseball team from Ohio plunged off a highway ramp early this morning 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.
“It looked to me like a big slab of concrete falling down,” said Danny Lloyd, 57, of Frostburg, Md. “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.” The impact broke his windshield, pushed his truck into the concrete and wrecked the front bumper, Lloyd said. He was not injured.
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 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 pulled 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. He said the bus driver may not have planned to exit the interstate, and may have mistaken a car pool exit ramp for the regular car pool lane that continues down the interstate.
When the bus 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.
Bluffton University assistant football coach Steve Rogers said he was working out in the weight room with members of the football team around 6 a.m. when they saw news of the bus crash on television. He said when they saw the markings on the side of the bus, “That’s when reality hit everybody.” They recognized the bus company as one all the school’s sports teams may have used, he said.
“Everybody was in shock. Nobody what to say or what to feel,” he said.
His players started calling friends they knew on the baseball team, trying to reach some by cell phone. The campus is one small enough that everyone will know someone who was on the bus, Rogers said.
“It hits home harder than it would if it had happened at a bigger school. Everybody knows each other,” he said.
The worst part is waiting to find out who was injured and who was killed, Rogers said.
Pastor Steve Yoder with the First Mennonite Church, said the university is has close ties to the community and that the tragedy would have a heavy impact.
Bluffton clergy were organizing a Friday campus gathering to give students a venue to express their feelings about the crash, he said.
Bluffton University, 50 miles south of Toledo, has 1,150 students and is affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA.
