[PAmedic]

If you are familiar w/ this school- its in the middle of nowhere but a nice place- I knew some students from there back in the day.



4 Indiana college students killed in van crash

Taylor Univ. employee also killed in state’s 2nd college tragedy in a week

UPLAND, Ind. - A week of celebrations turned to mourning on a university campus Thursday after a highway crash killed five students and staff as they headed home after setting up for a scholarship banquet.

“We’re living a nightmare,” said Jim Garringer, spokesman for Taylor University, a small evangelical Christian school northeast of Indianapolis.

Four of the victims were students, ages 18 to 22, and the fifth was an employee they worked within the university’s dining services. Four others who had been in the van were hospitalized, including a 22-year-old student listed in critical condition Thursday morning.

The van was about 10 miles north of Taylor’s Upland campus Wednesday night when it was hit by a tractor-trailer that crashed through a median Interstate 69.

As word of the deaths spread across the campus of 1,900 students, friends and classmates gathered in the campus chapel to pray. Another service was planned for Thursday morning, and classes were canceled for the day, Garringer said.

Earlier tragedy
The deadly crash was Indiana’s second college tragedy in a week.

Last Thursday, five Indiana University music school students died when their plane crashed in fog outside Bloomington as they were returning from a concert rehearsal in West Lafayette. A memorial service was held Wednesday in Bloomington. A preliminary investigation report, released Wednesday, found no mechanical problems with the plane.

At Taylor University, 100 miles northwest of Bloomington, students sobbed and hugged each other outside the chapel.

'Horrific' crash
Investigators were trying to determine why the semi crashed through the median about 8 p.m., peeling open the side of the van. The truck driver, identified by police as Robert F. Spencer, 27, of Canton, Mich., was hospitalized in fair condition Thursday.

“It was one of the most horrific crashes I’ve ever seen,” said Indiana State Police Sgt. Rod Russell.

The students and staff had been in Fort Wayne preparing for a scholarship banquet that was to be part of new school President Eugene Habecker’s inauguration festivities planned for the weekend.

Garringer said he did not yet know whether the events would continue as planned.

“I was hoping that I woke up this morning and was dreaming all this,” Garringer said Thursday. “There’s just that sense that this can’t have happened.”

Another Taylor van was following the one involved in the crash, but it had pulled off the highway to refuel and came up on the accident scene soon after it happened, Garringer said.

Police identified the victims as Elizabeth A. Smith, 22, of Mount Zion, Ill.; Bradley J. Larson, 22, of Elm Grove, Wis.; Whitney E. Cerak, 18, of Gaylord, Mich.; Laurel E. Erb, 20, of St. Charles, Ill.; and Taylor University employee Monica Felver, 53, of Hartford City.

The university employee driving the van, Vickie L. Rhodes, 54, of Fairmount; employees Connie Magers, 50, of Gas City, and Michele M. Miller, 43, of Marion; and student Laura J. Vanryn, 22, of Caledonia, Mich., were hospitalized. Vanryn was in critical condition after being airlifted to Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne.

[Brokeback Flamer]

Man that is a tragedy. That will rock the Taylor campus and Upland community for sure. I will have to get a hold of my contacts at Ivanhoe's to fil me in. Thanks for the update!

[Sly Fox]

Yeah, some of the guys from my church in high school went there. Its a school with philosophies similar to LU. What a horrific accident.

[PAmedic]

could it get more awful for these families?

Body in Mistaken Identity Case Exhumed

By JOHN FLESHER
The Associated Press

GAYLORD, Mich. - Crews on Tuesday exhumed the body of Laura VanRyn from a northern Michigan cemetery where the parents of another young woman had buried her in a tragic case of mistaken identity.

VanRyn's casket was removed nearly a week after the stunning news that fellow college classmate Whitney Cerak - not VanRyn - had survived an April van crash that killed five people.

Cerak, 19, and VanRyn, 22, looked remarkably alike and were together the night of April 26, returning from banquet preparations with a group from Taylor University, when a tractor-trailer slammed into their university van.

Cerak's family was told their daughter was dead, and they never viewed the body. VanRyn's parents were told their daughter was alive but seriously injured and in a coma.


The VanRyns kept vigil at the bedside of the injured young woman for weeks, not realizing until she began regaining consciousness that she was actually Cerak. The mixup was confirmed by dental records last week, more than month after the Ceraks had held a funeral and buried a body that turned out to have been VanRyn's.

Tuesday morning, the gates to Fairview Cemetery in Gaylord were closed as workers dug out the grave with a front-end loader and then lifted the casket from the ground around 10 a.m. The casket was loaded into a hearse from the cemetery.


June 6, 2006 10:25 AM