Atlanta – A small college in Ohio was thrown into mourning Friday after a bus carrying the school’s baseball team tumbled over the side of a highway overpass and slammed onto the pavement 30 feet below, killing four students and the husband-and-wife drivers.
The team from the close-knit, Mennonite-affiliated Bluffton University was making its annual spring training trip to Florida before daybreak when the charter bus crashed, scattering bags of baseball equipment across the road and splattering blood on the overpass. Some of the athletes climbed out the roof escape hatch, dazed and bloody.
“I just looked out and saw the road coming up at me. I remember the catcher tapping me on the head, telling me to get out because there was gas all over,” said A.J. Ramthun, 18, a second baseman from Springfield, Ohio, who was asleep in a window seat and suffered a broken collarbone and cuts.
Investigators said the driver apparently mistook the exit ramp for a lane and went into the curve at full speed. It was dark at the time, but the weather was clear.
On the 1,150-student campus in Bluffton, about 50 miles south of Toledo, students and community residents filled the gymnasium to grieve.
Sophomore Courtney Minnich said that at a college as small as Bluffton, “even if you didn’t know everybody, it will hurt, because you’ve seen them on campus.”
Classes were canceled, along with other sports trips that had been scheduled during this week’s spring break. Two airlines arranged free flights to Atlanta for the players’ parents on Friday evening.
Beyond the six killed, 28 players and their coach, James Grandey, 29, were taken to the hospital. He and six players were reported in serious or critical condition; many of the rest were soon released. The players’ injuries included broken bones, cuts and bruises.
The bus had set out from Ohio the evening before and had traveled all night before it went off the road and landed on its side about 5:30 a.m. on Interstate 75. Two vehicles traveling under the overpass were struck by the bus, but their drivers were not hurt.
The National Transportation Safety Board was called in to investigate. It was not known if the bus had seat belts.
“This is deeply impacting all of our students, faculty and staff. We know these people on a first-name basis,” said James Harder, the school’s president. “For now we’re pulling together and supporting each other as best we can.”
