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| This undated photo provided by Seton Hill University shows women's college lacrosse coach Kristina Quigley. A tour bus carrying the Seton Hill women's lacrosse team to a game went off the Pennsylvania Turnpike on Saturday, March 16, 2013, and crashed into a tree. Authorities said the accident killed the driver and Kristina Quigley, who was about six months pregnant, and sent others to the hospital. |
CARLISLE, Pa.
(AP) -- A road trip by a college women's lacrosse team came to a
horrifying end Saturday when the team bus veered off the Pennsylvania
Turnpike and crashed into a tree, killing a pregnant coach, her unborn
child, and the driver, and injuring numerous others, authorities said.
Seton
Hill University team players and coaches were among the 23 people
aboard when the bus crashed just before 9 a.m. No other vehicle was
involved, and police could not immediately say what caused the accident.
Coach
Kristina Quigley, 30, of Greensburg was flown to a hospital but died
there of injuries she suffered in the crash, Cumberland County
authorities said. Quigley was about six-months pregnant and her unborn
child did not survive, authorities said. The bus driver, Anthony
Guaetta, 61, of Johnstown, died at the scene.
The
other passengers were removed from the bus within an hour and taken to
hospitals as a precaution. The collision appeared to have shorn away the
front left side of the bus, which rested upright about 70 yards from
the road at the bottom of a grassy slope.
The
lacrosse team was headed to play Saturday afternoon at Millersville
University, about 50 miles from the crash site in central Pennsylvania,
for its fourth game of the year.
Both
Saturday's game and a Sunday home game were canceled after the crash,
and Seton Hill, a Catholic school of about 2,500 students near
Pittsburgh, said a memorial Mass was planned for Sunday night on campus.
Duquesne
University women's lacrosse coach Mike Scerbo remembered Quigley as a
warm, outgoing person who immediately impressed him when he hired her to
be an assistant during the 2008 season.
Quigley,
also a Duquesne alum, spent just one season under Scerbo before moving
to South Carolina to start Erskine College's NCAA Division II program.
"In
that time, I really saw how much passion she had to be a coach, and how
much she enjoyed working with the kids," Scerbo said. "She was a
teacher, and she wanted to help kids grow and learn, not just about the
sport, but about life."
She spent three years
at Erskine before taking the top job at Seton Hill for the 2012 season.
She stayed in touch with Scerbo, often seeking his guidance and showing
up at the Duquesne alumni game.
"She was a
very happy person, very passionate about life, about her players, about
her job and most importantly about her family," Scerbo said.
Quigley, a native of Baltimore, was married and had a young son, Gavin, the school said.
The
bus operator, Mlaker Charter & Tours, of Davidsville, Pa., is up to
date on its inspections, which include bus and driver safety checks,
said Jennifer Kocher, a spokeswoman for the state Public Utility
Commission, which regulates bus companies.
The
agency's motor safety inspectors could think of no accidents or
violations involving the company that would raise a red flag, she said,
though complete safety records were not available Saturday.
On
Tuesday, another bus carrying college lacrosse players from a Vermont
team was hit by a sports car that spun out of control on a wet highway
in upstate New York, sending the bus toppling onto its side, police
said. One person in the car died.
And last
month, a bus carrying 42 high school students from the Philadelphia area
and their chaperones slammed into an overpass in Boston, injuring 35.
Authorities said the driver had directed the bus onto a road with a
height limit.
