Debra Waddell was dozing in her seat near the front of the charter bus when it veered off I-75, careened up an embankment and rammed the side of an overpass.
“We swerved and the next thing I knew we were on a hill,” Waddell recalled Monday, a day after the accident involving a choral group from Mill Creek High School in Gwinnett County.
“It was almost like a rollercoaster that went crazy,” said Waddell, a parent-chaperone. “It happened in seconds. I was in shock. The kids were screaming. I looked down and didn’t see my daughter. I heard one of the kids say she was outside.”
Rebecca Waddell, 15, had been sitting in the front, ahead of her mom. She was thrown through the windshield and lay near the bottom of the embankment when her mother next saw her.
Rebecca was one of two bus passengers still hospitalized Monday. She was in stable condition at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon with a fractured facial bone and eye socket, a broken shoulder and bruises. The other student, whose name wasn’t released, also was in stable condition.
Many others among the bus’s 51 passengers were left with lesser injuries ranging from broken bones to black eyes sustained as they were tossed around the cabin. All were left with frightening memories of an accident that could have been much worse.
The members of Mill Creek’s Show Choir were returning from a competition in Orlando on a bus chartered by the group’s booster association. The bus was on I-75 north in Dooly County just after 3 p.m. Sunday when an accident ahead prompted the bus driver to swerve off the road to avoid hitting a car. Investigators said the bus traveled 580 feet before reaching the steep embankment that slowed it before it hit the bridge.
It came to a stop crunched against the bridge, tilted down the embankment at a perilous angle. Responding firefighters had to stabilize the massive vehicle to prevent a tip-over.
“All of the students had to be evacuated through windows on the right side of the bus,” Georgia State Patrol Sgt. Jon Posey said. “The wrecker service got there and strapped the bus.”
Debra Waddell, a nurse, had to remain in the bus with the rest of the students, even as she feared for Rebecca, who was tended to by paramedics outside. But she was relieved when she saw Rebecca lift her head. She tried to keep calm and focus on the well-being of all the kids. Sophomore chorus member Hope Douds led students in prayer as they waited for help, she said.
After the bus was evacuated, a police officer drove Waddell to the hospital where Rebecca was airlifted. “It was the longest 46 miles of my life,” she said.
“She is progressing,” Debra Waddell said Monday, adding her daughter may be released today.
Georgia State Patrol officers said a driver in front of the bus was following another car too closely and caused the initial accident. Investigators are still looking into whether the bus, operated by Harmon Brothers Charter Service, was properly maintained. They also are checking driver Jamie Villafane’s record and investigating his actions in the incident. Villafane was not seriously injured.
Calls to Harmon Brothers were not returned Monday.
At the high school Monday, counselors were on hand to console students if they were involved in the crash or had friends aboard. About half of the 46 choral students on the bus stayed home to recover, school officials said.
Some parents voiced concerns they were not notified until hours after the crash.
Parent Mark Tumbleston says he has yet to hear from school officials. His daughter called him right after the accident, and he drove to Macon to meet her at the hospital. She suffered a broken nose, a broken tooth and a black eye.
Tumbleston said he is upset about the lack of communication.
“We got a phone call from our daughter who was hysterical,” Tumbleston said. “She said the bus had been in a wreck. She knew they hadn’t gotten to Macon yet, but she didn’t know where she was. I told her we were on our way.”
Tumbleston said he had provided emergency information to both the school and travel agency handling the trip, Learning Curves Travel of Buford. He said he only got word from a choir parent four hours later, when he was already in Macon.
Officials at Learning Curves Travel said they were not in contact with the bus during its return from Orlando.
“All we do is hire the bus company; they provided the driver,” said Morris Ayres, an administrator at Learning Curves, adding he didn’t know about the crash until hearing news reports.
“We are a six-year-old company and we have never had an accident like this. It is a first for us.”
Mill Creek Principal Jim Markham, who waited at the school Sunday night for any students who might return there, said he did not have a list of names of students on the trip because it was a project of the booster club.
“We are going to look at our processes and see if there was a possibility that we stepped outside of process. Not knowing who was on that bus troubles me.”
The Mill Creek singers didn’t place in the Orlando contest, according to Debra Waddell, but she said they’re winners in a much bigger way.
“They won because they came back home alive. It’s a miracle.”
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