Arkansas bus crash kills one child, injures 45 people
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A third-grader was killed and at least 45 people were injured when a charter bus carrying youth football players from Tennessee rolled off an interstate and overturned before sunrise Monday in central Arkansas, authorities said.
Arkansas State Police said the bus crashed along Interstate 30 near Benton, about 25 miles southwest of Little Rock. Police said most of the injured were children and that they were taken to hospitals in Little Rock and Benton.
The elementary-school age children from the Orange Mound Youth Association in southeast Memphis were returning home after playing in a tournament in the Dallas area over the weekend, according to Memphis TV station WMC.
One of half a dozen adults on the bus, Damous Hailey, told the Commercial Appeal newspaper that the bus swerved then flipped “about 15 or 20 times,” before landing on its side at the foot of an embankment.
“When the bus started flipping, the kids were hollering, and we were trying to calm them down,” he said in an interview from Saline Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for injuries to his right side and leg. “I was holding on, trying to make sure I didn't get thrown out.”
Teams and coaches affiliated with the Orange Mound Youth Association have not returned phone calls and emails seeking comment.
At a news conference in Memphis Monday afternoon, Nickalous Manning, area superintendent of Aspire Public Schools, said a third-grader from an Aspire charter school died in the crash. He did not reveal the child's name.
“When we talked to teammates here, you saw on their faces about what that young person meant to them, the impact that he had on the school community,” Manning said. “This is going to be a loss that's going to be hard to heal from.”
A speeding bus filled with schoolchildren crashed in Chattanooga, Tenn., in November 2016, leaving six students dead. Prosecutors said the driver was on the phone at the time of the crash. He was convicted in March on various charges, including six counts of criminally negligent homicide.