Family and friends mourn at a vigil held for former Wylie High School softball player Meagan Richardson, 19, at the Wylie High School softball field on Saturday, Sept. 27, 2014, in Wylie, Texas. Richardson was one of the four people killed in a bus crash on Friday night in Oklahoma involving the North Central Texas College softball team.The tractor-trailer that collided with a bus and killed four members of a Texas community college women’s softball team drove straight through an interstate median without any signs of braking or trying to avoid the collision, federal investigators said Sunday.
The truck was northbound on Interstate 35 near Davis, Oklahoma Friday night. As the roadway made a gentle curve to the right, the truck instead continued straight. It traveled about 820 feet through the median and struck the southbound bus carrying 15 members of the North Central Texas College team and driven by their coach, said Robert Sumwalt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Even after smashing into the driver side of the bus, the truck continued another 300 feet, crossing the southbound lanes and barreling through and uprooting trees, Sumwalt said.
“Basically, the general trajectory from the beginning of the roadway departure all the way to the collision and then onward into the trees was basically a straight line,” Sumwalt said.
Asked if that suggested the driver was sleeping or otherwise indisposed, Sumwalt said: “That’s going to be the million dollar question.”