Authorities say 28 high school students were hospitalized Thursday after their school bus rolled over and crashed in East Tennessee.
According WBIR10 , the single-vehicle accident happened near Jonesborough around 3 pm after buses left David Crockett High School to take students home.
Reports say the bus, which was carrying 67 students, was traveling down a rural street when one of its tires dropped off the side of the small roadway. The bus driver then reportedly over-corrected, causing the vehicle to flip over in a nearby field.
“We were just going down the road, and the tire hit the ditch, and we started flipping … started flipping three or four times,” a crash victim, Cody Silvers, told WBIR .
Of the 28 people sent to the hospital, only about fix or six were expected to be released Thursday night, and a number of students are seriously injured, according to Washington County schools spokeswoman Susan Kiernan.
The bus driver did not suffer extensive injuries from the crash, according to Kiernan.
“We had two head injuries, two broken femurs,” said Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper Diane May. “The rest we had were some broken arms, broken forearms, cuts, lacerations, that was the majority.”
Doctors expect a “full recovery” for all students that were injured during the crash.
TriCities.com reports that David Crockett High School will operate on a regular schedule Friday and counselors will be available if students want to talk about the incident. A formal investigation will also begin into the crash starting on Friday.
WBIR has more on the David Crockett High School bus crash in the video below: