The Post-Tribune
Copyright 2008 The Post-Tribune
MERRILLVILLE, Ind. — More than two dozen passengers on a Greyhound bus were injured Tuesday when their bus slammed into a concrete median and overturned on Interstate 65 north of the U.S. 231 interchange, snarling traffic for hours.
None of the 41 passengers, nor the driver, was injured seriously, though all were taken to area hospitals for treatment and evaluation, said State Police spokeswoman Sgt. Ann Wojas. At least 11 passengers reported no injuries.
“So far, the worst (injury) we’ve heard about has been a concussion,” Wojas said.
One passenger, Tara Robinson of Hobart, said she was talking on the phone with a friend when the bus started swerving.
“All of a sudden I heard screaming. I looked up and the bus was out of control. Then all of a sudden we flipped. It was crazy,” said Robinson, 18.
The bus ended up on its right side, officials said, with its wheels against the concrete barriers in the highway’s median.
“Everyone was screaming; there was blood everywhere and broken glass,” Robinson said.
A Rensselaer man also was among the 41 passengers.
The driver, 46-year-old Darren Duke of Indianapolis, had started out for Chicago at 2:30 a.m. and was returning to Indianapolis around 10 a.m. when he apparently fell asleep at the wheel, Wojas said. The bus had stopped in Gary and Hammond on the way in and out of Chicago, and the next stop would have been Lafayette.
Tire tracks at the crash scene seem to show that the bus first veered more than 10 feet off the right shoulder, leaving deep tracks in the roadside grass and nearly sliding off the embankment. Duke apparently swung the bus back onto the road, but lost control and struck the median, flipping the bus on its side.
Traffic on southbound I-65 was blocked completely from about 10 a.m. until well after 1 p.m. as Samaritans and rescue workers unloaded injured passengers and hazardous materials teams cleaned up a moat of diesel fuel that formed along the highway.
Dave Wiggs of Lowell was doing masonry work at a subdivision adjacent to the highway when the crash happened.
“You saw this black stuff flying in the air,” Wiggs said. “You could hear steel hitting something.”
Within minutes, passengers were climbing out through the front windshield or on top of the bus from windows on the driver’s side, said Adam Kaleta, who was driving from Chicago to Logansport.
“I saw the bus sliding and all the dust,” he said. “I just got out and started helping people. You could smell the gas, and this one guy I helped asked me could I go get his bag and I’m like, ‘You seriously want me to go back in there?’ ”
Wojas said an investigation into the crash was not complete and that no citations have been issued. Traffic is relatively light on the interstate that time of morning, and the roadway was dry until a rainstorm several hours after the crash. No other vehicles were damaged in the crash, Wojas said.
Around 10:30 a.m., state police closed southbound I-65 at U.S. 30 in Merrillville, the next exit north of the crash scene, turning the two-lane expressway into a virtual parking lot as crash investigators surveyed the scene. Traffic on the expressway remained sluggish for miles hours after a single lane was reopened around 1 p.m.
Agencies from towns across the region assisted, including the Crown Point Fire Department, Lake County Sheriff’s Police, and ambulance services from Cedar Lake, Merrillville, St. John, Lowell, Hobart, Schererville, Lake of the Hills, and Lakes of the Four Seasons.
Staff writers John Byrne, Diane Spivak and Piet Levy, and Post- Tribune wire services contributed to this report.