Kindergartner among 5 killed in horrific Chattanooga school bus crash, official says

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — The city of Chattanooga was reeling Tuesday after a horrific school bus crash that killed at least five elementary school students and injured 31 others.

Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Dr. Kirk Kelly, identified the four girls and one boy killed as three fourth graders, a first grader and a kindergartner.

Six of the children injured remained in intensive care Tuesday morning, six others were admitted to the hospital and the remaining students were treated and released, Kelly said.

During an 11:30 p.m. press conference, Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher said his department was working to retrieve the bus' "black box" in hopes it would provide details on the cause.

The crash was reported at about 3:30 p.m. in the 300 block of Talley Road, officials said.

The 37 children on board the school bus, aged kindergarten to fifth grade, had just left Woodmore Elementary School, Fletcher said during the press conference.

For some reason the bus, driven by Johnthony Walker, 24, veered off the road and hit a tree so hard it nearly split the bus in half.

It took several hours for emergency workers to extricate all of the children from the ruins of the bus, Fletcher said.

“(Things) don’t really get much worse than they are today,” he said. “As I’ve told our folks locally, the type of accident we’re responding to today, a bus accident with multiple injuries to children, is every public safety professional’s worst nightmare.”

In a 1 a.m. Twitter post, the Chattanooga Police Department confirmed that five children were killed in the crash, though many media outlets had reported several different numbers.

Fletcher chided the media for reporting incorrect numbers as news of the crash was breaking.

“That was reckless, that was harmful to the families … I implore you not to do that,” he said.

Walker was arrested and charged with five counts of vehicular homicide, reckless endangerment and reckless driving, Fletcher said.

The cause of the single-vehicle crash was still under investigation but speed is suspected to be a contributing factor, he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board announced Tuesday that it would be investigating the crash as well.

Walker was scheduled to go in front of a judge at 8:30 a.m.

Cox Media Group