A bus carrying members of a high school marching band on a trip to a music camp ran off a highway and tumbled down a steep ravine in New York state on Thursday, killing two people and injuring dozens of others, several of them severely.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, speaking at a news conference hours later, said it appeared likely “a faulty front tire contributed to the accident,” though the cause of the wreck remained under investigation.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Mazzone of the New York State Police said the wreck killed two adult women who were among 44 passengers, 40 students and four adults, headed from Farmington High School on Long Island to Pennsylvania.
Hochul said five or six other people were critically injured. One of the dead was a faculty adviser for the school’s band program.
Dozens of students suffered minor bumps and bruises and were seen walking around the scene after the crash. The injured were taken to a half-dozen area hospitals.
“Imagine the fear, the screams in the aftermath. These high school students, many of them freshmen were surrounded by this chaos,” Hochul said.
The two dead were identified as Beatrice Ferarri, 77, of Farmingdale, and Gina Pellettiere, 43, of the nearby Long Island town of Massapequa. Pellettiere was one of three advisers to the marching band, as well as the lone adviser to both the school’s jazz and “pep” bands, the Farmingdale High School website shows.
In a Facebook posting, an individual named Ray Eugenio wrote that his grandson was among those injured in the wreck and asked for prayers.
“He was involved in a very serious accident and we do not know the extent of his injuries,” the post said. The account could not be independently verified.
The crash occurred in the early afternoon along Interstate 84 near the town of Wawayanda, about 75 miles (120 km) northwest of New York City near the border with New Jersey. The New York State Police said in a posting on social media the westbound lanes of the highway were closed at that point.