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College team's bus plunge kills 4 players

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 3, 2007

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 play in Sarasota and Fort Myers when the charter bus crashed before daybreak, 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, an 18-year-old second-baseman from Springfield, Ohio, who was asleep in a window seat and suffered a broken collarbone and cuts on his face from broken glass. "I heard some guys crying, 'I'm stuck! I'm stuck!' "

Investigators said the driver apparently mistook the exit ramp for a lane and went into the curve at full speed. It was dark, but the weather was clear.

On the 1,150-student campus in Bluffton, about 50 miles south of Toledo, students and community residents - some wiping away tears - filled the gymnasium to grieve and learn more about what happened.

The university identified victims as sophomores David Betts and Tyler Williams; freshmen Scott Harmon and Cody Holp; bus driver Jerome Niemeyer; and his wife, Jean Niemeyer, all from Ohio.

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 next week's spring break. Two airlines arranged for the players' parents to fly to Atlanta free 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 released. 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 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.

"It looked to me like a big slab of concrete falling down," said pickup driver 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 National Transportation Safety Board was called in to investigate. The driver and his wife had boarded the bus less than an hour before the wreck, and there were no skid marks. Investigators hoped to tap into the bus computer system for clues.

[Last modified March 3, 2007, 01:12:02]