A Community Mourns Fatal Bus Crash

March 2, 2007 — -- The close-knit community of Bluffton, Ohio, was in shock today, as parents, administrators and students woke up to the news that a bus carrying the local university's baseball team plummeted off an Atlanta overpass in a pre-dawn accident that killed six people and injured 29 others.

Thirty-three people, including the coaching staff from the Mennonite-affiliated school, located 50 miles southeast of Toledo, were on the bus when it plunged off Interstate 75 and landed on a pickup truck traveling below, according to Atlanta police spokesman Joe Cobb.

Among those killed were the bus driver, his wife and four students. The driver of the pickup truck was not injured.

Teresa Bauman's oldest son, Chris, a junior on the baseball team, was pinned underneath the bus when it fell off the overpass.

"All things considered he's very lucky. He was on the left hand side of the bus, using his book bag as a pillow. Somehow he wound up outside the bus, and the bus landed on his leg," Bauman told ABC News.

The accident happened at around 5:30 a.m., when the majority of students were asleep, recalled another injured student, 18-year-old A.J. Ramthun, during a press conference. He woke up when the bus hit the wall of the overpass. "I saw the road coming toward me," he said.

Ramthun, who was also seated on the left-hand side of the bus, the side that the bus landed on, had a number of cuts all over his face from the shattered glass. But he considered himself fortunate. "I was one of the lucky ones. My collarbone was broken, I got some stitches in my ears and the corners of both my eyes, my finger was ripped to the bone," he said.

His older brother Michael, he said, was trapped underneath the bus and injured his hip. "He might not recover," a distraught Ramthun told reporters.

The accident scene was orderly, with the team members helping one another other, according to Ramthun.

One of the players helped him to get out of the bus. "He told me we had to get out because there was gas everywhere," Ramthun recalled.