Families Gather at Atlanta Team Crash Site as NTSB Investigates

About 20 family members of the baseball players involved in Friday's fatal bus wreck on I-75 visited the scene Saturday as traffic accident investigators worked nearby.

The group, ranging in age from what looked to be older parents to children as young as elementary school-age, gathered about noon on the Northside Drive bridge from which the bus plunged onto the interstate.

Surrounded by police and Red Cross workers, some members of the group carried boxes of tissues, while others had cameras.

They looked at the exit ramp the bus ran up as it came off the freeway and at the highway below the overpass where the bus ended up on its side.

Several also began reading the cards and memorial cards left by well-wishers in the chain-link fence atop the low concrete wall of the Northside bridge.

Other family members boarded buses from their downtown hotel to visit the four ballplayers still at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Bluffton University officials flew in Friday night and met Saturday morning at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta with the victims to answer questions.

Parents were anxious to nail down logistics, said Lynn Mesley, whose son, 19-year-old James Hausman, was on the bus.

Some team members gathered in the hotel lobby Saturday morning, their scrapes, bruises, limps and bandages labeling them as survivors of the bus' plunge off Northside Drive onto I-75 early Friday morning.

Atlanta police spokesman Officer Steve Coleman said Saturday that the wrecked bus was taken overnight to a secure location at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

That will be one of the places investigators go Saturday, according to Paul Schlamm, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation.

The NTSB's Schlamm said the teams of investigators are focusing on a number of areas.

"We have teams at the roadway, at the bus; others who will be gathering up reports on the bus, on the drivers; others who will be doing interviews [with passengers or witnesses] - anyone who can say what happened," said Schlamm.

The bus was carrying the Bluffton Beavers baseball team from Ohio to Florida, where they were scheduled to play in a tournament next week. It was southbound on I-75 when it went up an off-ramp from the high-occupancy vehicle lanes, crossed Northside Drive and plunged sideways over the bridge rail and landed on the interstate.

The 29 surviving passengers were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, Piedmont Hospital and Atlanta Medical Center. Two were in critical condition, one was serious and 16 others were in good to fair condition, hospital officials said Friday. The most critically injured tended to be near the front of the bus. Injuries included bruised lungs, a spleen that had to be removed and a blood clot on one student's brain that led to emergency neurosurgery.

After learning of the 5:30 a.m. crash, family members from Ohio came to Atlanta to be with their children. Most stayed at the Marriott Marquis hotel.

By Saturday, the passengers not hospitalized were nursing cuts and bruises. And looking for clothing.

"Many of these kids - their clothes are soaked in diesel," Atlanta Fire Department spokesman Capt. Byron Kennedy said Saturday. The Red Cross is collecting donations. "Most of their families, they're ready to get back home."

Schlamm, the NTSB spokesman, said he does not expect investigators to report quickly on what caused the accident.

An electronic device on the bus will be used to determine more about the accident, Schlamm said. At a Friday night news conference, officials said they would look at all factors, including the configuration of the exit ramp and signage leading up to it.

There were no skid marks, indicating the driver either did not attempt to stop or there was a mechanical failure, police said.

Much of what investigators hope to learn will come from the baseball players.

"I woke up as soon as the bus hit the overpass wall," A.J. Ramthun said. "That's when I looked up. And the bus landed on the left side, which is the side I was sitting on. I just looked out and saw the road coming up after me, and that's all."

Killed in the wreck were sophomores David Betts and Tyler Williams, freshmen Scott Harmon and Cody Holp, bus driver Jerome Niemeyer and his wife, Jean, all from Ohio.

Atlanta police Maj. Calvin Moss said the driver was "fresh," having taken the wheel about 4:30 a.m., an hour before the crash. There was no indication drugs or alcohol caused the crash, police said.

Ramthun, an infielder from Springfield, Ohio, said Curt Schroeder, a sophomore catcher on the "tightly knit" team, tapped him on the head "telling me we needed to get out because there was gas all over the place," the bruised Ramthun told a group of reporters outside Grady.

"I heard some guys crying, 'I'm stuck, I'm stuck.' I walked by Coach Grandey, who is now in stable condition, but at that time he was so bad off. And I tried to help him up and that's when I realized my shoulder was hurt.

"It was just chaos in my mind."

Bluffton Coach James Grandey, 29, remained in serious condition Saturday at Piedmont Hospital but is expected to improve.

Ramthun looked around for his brother, Mike, a sophomore, but could not find him. His brother was trapped under the bus and had an injured hip.

"He might not recover," Ramthun said, saying he was already feeling guilty because he suffered relatively minor injuries - a broken collarbone and facial cuts and bruises. "And I don't know how to come up to some of these guys and say I'm sorry while I'm standing.

Schroeder, also asleep upon first impact, said he "figured we were sliding down a cliff or something." He smelled gas, realized he needed to get out of the bus and climbed through an emergency exit.

"I just remember bags, and people lying there moaning," he said.

The Rev. Heather Collins, head of the chaplaincy at the hospital, said several victims described the strong smell of diesel fuel as they rescued their more seriously injured friends.

"It was terrifying experience," Collins said. "It was dark and confusing. They described a lot of freeze-frame images."

Allen Slabaugh, a sophomore pitcher from Dalton, Ohio, was thrown from the bus with three other passengers before the vehicle plunged from the bridge, said Chester Slabaugh, the student's father.

The student needed some stitches, his father said.

"He was sleeping and then got ejected before it went over the bridge," the elder Slabaugh said Friday morning as he prepared to go to the airport. "He did not go over, by the grace of God."

As the bus lay on its side across the interstate lanes, passengers crawled out, some through a roof hatch, others through the shattered front windshield. Some were helped by motorists who had stopped beyond the wreck. Luggage and personal belongings were scattered over the highway.

One motorist found a student on the pavement. "I'm freezing. Can you find me a blanket?" the youth asked.

Minutes after the crash, junior Greg Sigg called his mother in Ohio. "He was still laying on I-75," she said. "It was not his cellphone [that he used]. It was just laying on the road. He called to say there was an accident but I'm alive. He said there's bodies laying all around me."

Her son, an all-conference first baseman from Maumee, Ohio, suffered broken facial bones and facial cuts and a deep gash on his leg.

The southbound HOV off-ramp to Northside Drive comes up suddenly, after a flurry of signs with a host of messages for drivers. Some just say it is an HOV lane. One says the left part of I-75 is about to split off into the I-85 merge. Next to that, a smaller HOV sign says "South I-75," and points down to the far left lane. Drivers are warned a mile and a half-mile in advance that they are nearing an exit.

But soon after that, the far-left HOV lane spawns an exit ramp, dotted off on its left. The signs there are the first indication that going left means exiting the interstates.

The state Department of Transportation said it is clear which lane the HOV lane is, and that the signs and ramp configuration meet or exceeded federal safety standards.

Stephen T. Henry, DOT director of operations, said the agency put two "stop ahead" signs on the ramp before the actual stop sign on Northside Drive, though it was not required to do so.

"You have to make a conscious decision to exit," he said.

The bus company, Executive Coach Luxury Travel of Ottawa, Ohio, did not return a phone call but said on its Web site: "We at Executive Coach Luxury Travel Inc. are deeply saddened ... We are continuing to cooperate with the officials investigating the accident in Atlanta ... Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims and their families."

According to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the company had 20 drivers and seven buses a year ago. There had been no crashes in the past 24 months reported to the agency.

In Bluffton, students and faculty spent the day grieving.

The university is affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA and is situated on a 234-acre campus in the northwest Ohio village of Bluffton.

The Division III baseball team was headed to play Eastern Mennonite in Sarasota, Fla., Saturday, and then on to the Gene Cusic Classic in Fort Myers, Fla., to play in annual tournament, where more than 300 teams come to play a week's worth of games during spring break.

"This is a sad tragedy for the students, families, friends and Bluffton University campus community. We are asking for prayers of support during this time," said Bluffton University President James M. Harder.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporters Kevin Duffy, Beth Warren, Brian Feagans, Eric Stirgus, Anna Varela, Ariel Hart, Rhonda Cook, Keri Smith, Doug Nurse, Ernie Suggs, Paul Donsky, database analyst Megan Clarke, and researchers Richard Hallman and Alice Wertheim contributed to this report.

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