Three adults were killed and at least a dozen high school students were hospitalized after an 18-wheeler collided head-on with a bus yesterday afternoon around 2 p.m. on a highway bridge in North Mississippi.
There were 62 students on two Choctaw County school buses returning from a tour of the University of Mississippi when the crash occurred. The driver of the 18-wheeler scraped the side of one bus and then hit the second head-on on Mississippi 8 near Mississippi 9, about a mile outside of Calhoun City, Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol trooper Ray Hall told the Clarion-Ledger.
Calhoun County Medical Examiner Jerry Fleming confirmed three dead at the scene of the accident: Phyllis Graham, a teacher at Ackerman High School, 37-year-old Steven Moss, the bus driver and assistant football coach at Ackerman, and 54-year old Gary Bailey, the driver of the 18-wheeler. Bailey was from Guntown. The three bodies were sent to a funeral home and then to Jackson for autopsy.
Fleming said he wasn’t aware of any previous medical conditions the driver had that could have caused the accident.
Choctaw County Emergency Management Director Brent McKnight confirmed that the bus was carrying seniors from Ackerman High School that were returning from a senior day field trip in Oxford, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
“They were a very eager and lively group,” said Ryan Felder, an Ole Miss Ambassador who helped in giving the tour.
“They were extremely excited to be on campus and asked a lot of questions, a lot of which kept me on my toes and made me think a lot.”
The group arrived on campus around 10:30 a.m. for the information session, the tour started at 11 a.m., according to Felder. The group stopped at the Johnson Commons for lunch at noon and left campus at 1 p.m.
Students on the two buses were transported to area hospitals with non-life threatening injuries and one injured student was airlifted to the North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo according to NEMS360.com.
Fewer than nine students were being treated for non-life threatening injuries, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
Seventeen people from the wreck were admitted as walk-ins at a hospital in Eupora after refusing treatment at the scene, according to a report by the Calhoun County Journal.