By PATRICK ORSAGOS Associated Press, and staff
COLUMBUS – The head of the federal agency investigating a deadly bus crash on I-70 that left six people dead, including three high school students, shouted out more than two dozen agencies and organizations that responded to the incident.
“There was a huge response here, so I just have to say ‘thank you’ to those good Samaritans and all the responders,” Jennifer Homendy, chair of the Natl. Transportation Safety Board, said at a brieffing Wednesday afternoon.
She singled out police officers from Gahanna who were heading to a training event when they learned of the accident and went directly to the scene.
Homendy listed some 26 police and fire departments and other emergency agencies that responded to the scene shortly after the Tuesday crash on westbound Interstate 70 in Licking County
As the NTSB began its investigation into the crash, stories of heroism began to emerge.
Tori Wilson, a sophomore at the school who was sitting toward the back of the bus when it was hit, told WBNS-TV she overheard someone talking about a fire and they needed to get out, but she was struggling because she was stuck.
“I had a kid like over top of me having a seizure and not moving… unresponsive,” she said. “I had my friend beside me to my right, that was sitting right to where I was, where I was gonna sit, but she said that I could have the inside towards the window. And all I could see was her head and the rest was all crushed underneath seats.”
Wilson said that while the bus was burning, the junior high band director kept running back onto the vehicle, grabbing students and pulling them to safety.
“The kid behind me was complaining (about) his legs and I was trying to get out, but like I didn’t wanna crush him because anytime I moved, the seats moved cause I was trying to get out and then he starts like screaming in pain,” Wilson said. “The kid that was on the far right of the three, he was in the middle of the aisle and not moving.”
Eventually, she pulled herself out of a window and escaped.
Homendy said the safety board team went to the scene Wednesday for the first time to get an overview of the site and start looking for cameras and other evidence from the five vehicles involved in the crash. The team will likely be in the area for five to seven days, and a preliminary report would likely be issued within the next few weeks, she said.
The vehicles were at the end of a string of vehicles stopped due to an earlier accident, she said. A commercial vehicle and SUV were in front of the bus, a second SUV behind it and a tractor-trailer belonging to Mid-State Systems of Hebron and driven by a 60-year-old Zanesville man rear-ended the SUV, starting the chain-reaction, according to the patrol and Homendy.
Three passengers on the bus, which was carrying a driver and 54 students and chaperones, were pronounced dead at the scene, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said. They were identified as John Mosley, of Mineral City and Jeffery Worrell, of Bolivar, both 18, and 15-year-old Katelyn Owens, of Mineral City.
All three people in the SUV behind the bus — a teacher and two parent chaperones for the student trip — were also pronounced dead at the scene. They were identified as high school teacher Dave Kennat, 56, of Navarre; Kristy Gaynor, 39, of Zoar, and Shannon Wigfield, 45, of Bolivar.
The driver of the other SUV, 75-year-old Robert Wolverton, of Heath, was also taken to a hospital. Of the drivers of the commercial vehicles involved, one was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening and the other was treated at the scene, the highway patrol said.
Two students remained hospitalized Wednesday with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, district officials said.