Community rallies to support family, friends of bus crash victims

Four students headed home from school were killed Tuesday afternoon on a rural highway in southwestern Minnesota when a school bus was broadsided by a van in a crash that also involved a pickup truck.

Fourteen other people, all but two of them children, were taken to hospitals in Marshall and Granite Falls, Minn.; four of the 14 were transferred to hospitals in Sioux Falls, S.D. By late Tuesday, nine people remained hospitalized. One was in critical condition and the rest were in stable condition with fractures, cuts and bruises, hospital and law enforcement authorities said.

Motorists coming across the chaotic scene helped the bus driver usher screaming children, some of them injured, through the escape hatch in the top of the bus, which had been knocked onto its side, before emergency vehicles arrived.

The crash happened about a mile south of Cottonwood at 3:30 p.m., said Lt. Mark Peterson of the Minnesota State Patrol. The bus, which was carrying 28 students from Lakeview School, a K-12 school in Cottonwood, was driving south on Hwy. 23 when it collided with a van going east on Lyon County Road 24, he said. The impact tipped the bus onto its side, and it struck or fell on the pickup truck, witnesses said. The drivers of the van and truck, both of whom were alone in their vehicles, were taken to area hospitals, but their condition was unknown late Tuesday, Peterson said.

He said an intense investigation was underway and it was not clear who, if anyone, was at fault. There are stop signs on County Road 24 as it crosses Highway 23. Skies were partly clear and snow was not falling or blowing in the area at the time, according to weather reports from the area.

First to arrive on the scene was Karen Mahlum, a 53-year-old Sacred Heart, Minn., resident who was driving toward Granite Falls when she saw what looked like a cloud of dust or smoke ahead of her on Hwy. 23.

"It looked like a tornado with dust and debris in the air," she said. "There was metal flying all over the place."

As the cloud cleared, Mahlum saw the yellow bus lying on its side. She called 911 on her cell phone and raced to the bus.

There, the driver cried out to her, "Help me! Help me! I have to get these kids out!" He appeared badly shaken by the accident but was clearheaded about getting the kids out of the bus, Mahlum said.

"Some of these kids were so little," she said. "And there were just so many. ... They were screaming and crying. Some were bleeding."

The driver handed children to Mahlum through the emergency hatch, directing the children to get in the ditch and away from the bus.

Terrified children were calling out for brothers and sisters still on the bus, she said. Some weren't wearing coats or shoes. Shoes and bookbags were strewn all over.

Other cars stopped at the scene, and more people ran up to help. Drivers put kids in their cars to get them out of the cold, Mahlum said. "Everyone worked frantically to get the kids off that bus," she said.

The driver told Mahlum there were kids in the back of the bus who were badly injured. "It looked liked they were unconscious," she said.

Emergency vehicles began to arrive from nearly every nearby community. Fire departments were asked to bring as much extrication equipment as they could.

Mahlum said the bus landed on the hood of a pickup truck and its airbag deployed. The woman driving the truck appeared to be trapped, she said.

Students who weren't seriously injured were brought back to the school, where emergency medical workers examined them before parents took them home, said Greg Isaackson, Cottonwood's city clerk-administrator. The school enrolls 588 students from the Cottonwood and Wood Lake area.

Shock and sorrow

As the sun set on the cold winter landscape and the news of the crash spread, sorrow was deep, Isaackson said. The father of one child who died is a local firefighter, he said.

"It's a close-knit group and it's going to hit them hard," he said.

Cottonwood is a town of about 1,150 and Wood Lake's population is about 450. Classes in the small Lakeview School District will be canceled today, but teachers, grief and support counselors and clergy will be at the school to talk with students and anyone else in the community, said Lakeview School District Superintendent Sheldon Johnson.

"We lost four beautiful children, and there's nothing in this world that's more devastating than that,'' he said.

"One of the strengths of a small community is that we're a close-knit community," he said. "When someone hurts, we all hurt. When someone grieves, we all grieve. And we will all rally around one another. We're at rock-bottom right now. ... But we'll put the pieces back together."

The Rev. Paul Hadusek, pastor of Cottonwood's Church of St. Mary, said he'll be among clergy at the school today.

"This is very devastating,'' he said. "You don't think something like this will happen in a small community. ... It's just something of a shock. There was no bad weather. No snow or ice."

Late Tuesday, the lights of recovery vehicles and police cars illuminated the scene around the crash. The State Patrol had the area blocked off.

"Our troopers live in this area and know these people," Peterson said. "An entire community is grieving, because everyone knows each other."

A Perkins restaurant at the intersection of Hwys. 59 and 23 was the only restaurant open in Marshall late Tuesday, as stunned residents from throughout Lyon County quietly murmured to each other rumors of whose children were on the bus when it crashed earlier in the day.

Marge Gritman knew at least three of them. Her nephew's sons, all grade-schoolers, were there. All were expected to survive, the longtime rural Cottonwood resident said, but she continued to wait for news on just how badly they were hurt.

Gritman, a 66-year-old transit driver in Marshall, got word of what happened from a passenger, and immediately expected the worst.

"We didn't know for sure, but my husband heard they were," she said. "It's not good. I've lost two children, and I know what those parents are going through."

Waitress Sue Sik of Marshall said her shift at the restaurant had been a slow task of piecing together what happened through dazed patrons who relayed what they heard. Names floated around the city, she said, including that of a popular high-school wrestler, or a sweet elementary school girl.

The number of children killed, she said, also slowly climbed to four as the hours passed.

It's another crushing blow to a community that just two years ago lost several teenage students from Cottonwood and surrounding cities in multiple car crashes. Sik knows firsthand Cottonwood students considered regulars at her restaurant.

"I've been through a lot of homecomings, snow days and basketball games with these kids" she said. "They'll do good. The people around them will help."

It'll be tough, but it always is when something like this happens.

In southwestern Minnesota, where Sik said "everyone in seven or eight counties are all or near all related," no family will deal with tragedy alone.

Gritman agrees. Healing would be no easy task, she said, but the city she knows well will cope--eventually.

"It'll pull together," she said, eyes downcast. "It's a town where neighbor helps neighbor."

In a statement released late Tuesday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said, "This is a sad night for Minnesota. ... Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who were killed or injured in this tragic accident."

Staff writer Jenna Ross contributed to this report. mlsmith@startribune.com • 612-673-4788 asimons@startribune.com • 612-673-4921