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Indiana students hurt in school bus crash

Other News Materials 17 December 2008 23:36 (UTC +04:00)

A school bus carrying as many as 60 middle school and high school students on an icy road collided with a car Wednesday morning and landed on its side in a central Indiana farm field, the sheriff said. Dozens of children were hurt but authorities said none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening, AP reported.

All the students were off the bus by the time emergency crews arrived, Madison County Sheriff Ron Richardson said. The Frankton Junior-Senior High School students and the driver helped the injured through the emergency hatch in the bus roof, he said.

Richardson said the driver of the car had been unable to stop and slid into the passenger side of the bus on a rural road about 35 miles northeast of Indianapolis.

"We're just thankful right now that it doesn't appear that we have anything very serious as far as injuries," the sheriff said.

Community Hospital in Anderson received 25 students from the crash, with a 12-year-old boy needing plastic surgery for complex facial cuts and a 13-year-old boy suffering a broken collarbone, said Katy Harrison Troxell, the hospital's marketing director.

Twenty-one other students from the crash were taken to other hospitals in Elwood and Anderson. Only minor injuries were reported among those students.

Joshua Derrickson, a junior at the school, told The Herald Bulletin of Anderson that students were knocked on top of each other in the crash.

"I was in the back on an inside seat, so everyone ended up on top of me," Derrickson said in a phone interview from the scene.

Slick conditions also caused a bus carrying elementary-school children to slide into a fence in the parking lot of an Anderson school. Nancy Farley, transportation director for the Anderson Community Schools, said several children were taken to hospitals for medical attention, but none of the injuries was believed to be serious.

Seven other school buses slid off roads in the Evansville area, but no injuries were reported. Other weather-related crashes were blamed for at least five deaths across the state since Tuesday evening.

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