A small college in Ohio was thrown into mourning after a bus carrying the school's baseball team tumbled over the side of a highway overpass and slammed onto the pavement 9m below, killing four students, the driver and his wife.
The team from the close-knit, Mennonite-affiliated Bluffton University was making its annual spring training trip to Florida before daybreak on Friday 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, an 18-year-old player 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 at the time, but the weather was clear.
On the 1,150-student campus in Bluffton, about 80km south of Toledo, students and community residents -- some wiping away tears -- filled the gymnasium to grieve and learn more about what happened.
Classes were canceled, along with other sports trips that had been scheduled for spring break this week.
Two airlines arranged for the players' parents to fly to Atlanta free on Friday evening, and a candlelight vigil was planned for Friday evening at the university.
Megan Barker, a student at the university, said she knew just about everyone on the team and described them as "a fun-loving group of guys," adding "they live as a family."
The university is affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA.
About one-fifth of the students are Mennonites, and the school stresses spirituality, but it is open to all religious backgrounds.
The church emphasizes pacifism and nonviolence.
But unlike adherents of more conservative Mennonite denominations and the Amish, members wear modern clothing and use electricity. Smoking and drinking are banned on campus.
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