Death toll rises to six in Ohio crash involving bus of high school students

National Transportation Safety Board begins work looking for cameras and other evidence from five vehicles involved in crash

A National Transportation Safety Board team was planning to start work on Wednesday at the scene of a deadly highway crash in Ohio involving a charter bus filled with high school students that left six people dead and 18 injured.

Jennifer Homendy, the NTSB chair, said the team would be looking for cameras and other evidence from the five vehicles involved in Tuesday’s crash on westbound Interstate 70 in Licking county, about 26 miles (42km) east of Columbus. Homendy said the team will likely be in the area for five to seven days and a preliminary report would likely be issued within the next few weeks.

Homendy said there was “conflicting information” about the sequence of events that led to the chain-reaction crash, which also involved an SUV and a semitruck. The Pioneer Trails charter bus was carrying students and chaperones from the Tuscarawas Valley local school district in eastern Ohio.

Three passengers on the bus, which was carrying a driver and 54 students and chaperones, were pronounced dead at the scene, the Ohio state highway patrol said. They were identified as John W Mosely, 18, of Mineral City; Jeffery D Worrell, 18, of Bolivar; and Katelyn N Owens, 15, of Mineral City.

The bus was carrying the students and chaperones to an Ohio School Boards Association conference in Columbus, said Derek Varansky, the Tuscarawas Valley superintendent.

The three-day conference, billed as “the second-largest education convention in the nation”, canceled its final day after organizers learned of the crash. The event, which began on Sunday, offered professional development sessions for school district management teams and an annual Student Achievement Fair featuring 100 booths of innovative school programs.

Speaking on Tuesday night at a community prayer vigil, Varansky described Tuesday as one of the darkest days in the district’s history and the worst day in his life. He said the community was looking to honor those who died and “just lift up those families, those students on the bus who survived and will live with that traumatic experience and to our entire district for the dark days, weeks, months to come”.

All three people in one of the passenger vehicles involved – a teacher and two parent chaperones for the student trip – were also pronounced dead at the scene. They were identified as the high school teacher Dave Kennat, 56, of Navarre; Kristy Gaynor, 39, of Zoar, and Shannon Wigfield, 45, of Bolivar.

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