I-75 bus wreck survivor graduates from college

BLUFFTON, Ohio — A survivor badly hurt in an I-75 bus crash in Atlanta that killed five student baseball players has graduated from their Ohio college.

Doctors didn’t think Tim Berta would ever walk again, let alone finish the four courses he needed to get his biology degree from Bluffton University.

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Associated Press

Tim Berta throws out the ceremonial first pitch before the start of a Bluffton University baseball game in April 2008.

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But on Sunday, the 24-year-old from Ida, Mich., received a standing ovation at the northwest Ohio school when he walked onto a stage and received his diploma.

Berta has spent the last two years going through rehabilitation since the March 2007 bus accident during the Bluffton baseball team’s annual spring trip to Florida.

He says he’s still making improvements every day. He now plans to start nursing school within the next year.

Last July, the National Transportation Safety Board blamed the tragedy on driver error and bad signage at the I-75-Northside Drive HOV exit ramp. NTSB Chairman Mark V. Rosenker called it a “terrible and tragic accident … that didn’t have to happen.”

Last month, more than two years after the accident, the Department of Transportation crews installed new pavement markers to the exit ramp.