NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – The Clarksville community is mourning Friday night after two Kenwood Middle School students were killed and several others were seriously injured when their school bus crashed in Carroll County.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol says there were 25 students and five teachers on the bus when it was involved in a crash with a Tennessee Department of Transportation dump truck and an SUV.
It happened around noon Friday at the intersection of Highway 70 and Cedar Grove in Carroll County.
Suzy Butler was one of the first to find out about the crash when her middle schooler called her from the wreckage.
“The bus had just crashed, and they had just evacuated off the bus, and she was just in hysterics,” Butler said. “She’s like, ‘I’m OK, but Mom, the other kids aren’t. The other kids aren’t.’”
Butler, who was hours away from her daughter, says she had to coach her through the situation by phone.
“The FaceTime call I’ll never, ever forget because of the wailing and the crying of the kids that I heard in the background,” she said. “All I want to do is just like go through the phone and hold her and hug her and tell her it’s OK, but all I could do is just talk her through it. I just kept saying to her, ‘help is on the way.’”
The group was on a field trip heading to a Greenpower USA competition in Jackson.
Butler says the students have spent all year building an electric car they would have raced at the Toyota Hub City Grand Prix on Saturday.
“They’ve built it from the ground up, and the teacher picks out two groups to take with her,” she said. “It’s a really special honor to be chosen to go on this trip, and they’ve looked forward to it all year.”
That event will go on without the Kenwood Middle School teams Saturday.
The host, Jackson-Madison Schools, says it will take on a spirit of reflection and unity, and there will be grief counselors available on site.
Maekayla Chambers says her son, also a student at Kenwood Middle, found out about the crash involving some of his closest friends during the school day.
She says he was told by other students who were on the bus, not school officials.
“It’s wrecked him,” Chambers said. “He’s used to going to football practice after school with these kids and these teachers, and that may not happen now. You know, how do you send them back to the next practice?”
Chambers says she didn’t get any communication from the school other than what they posted on Facebook.
“We’ve gotten no information, which would have been nice to have had so that we could prepare ourselves to have those hard conversations with our kids rather than them just coming home from school absolutely devastated,” she said.
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