NTSB Examining Baseball Team Bus Crash

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash of a charter bus that plummeted off an overpass in Atlanta, crashing onto Interstate 75 below. Four Bluffton University student athletes were killed, along with the driver and his wife.

The driver apparently mistook an exit ramp for an HOV lane.

The NTSB says it still isn't clear why the driver went up onto the ramp. Investigators say there were tire marks, but they don't know when the driver realized his mistake and tried to correct it.

Board member Kitty Higgins says numerous crashes have occurred at that uncommon left-side, HOV exit. She says no signs are visible that tell drivers to slow down for the ramp that ends at a T-intersection on the overpass.

Eight people remain hospitalized. Five are in serious or critical condition.

Tony Moore and his college baseball teammates were jolted awake when their bus slammed against a concrete barrier and dropped off an overpass. Two students were trapped, one player had already died and diesel fuel was leaking, survivors and family members said.

It would be hours before the team, and those left behind at their tight-knit Ohio campus, would know the toll: Four Bluffton University teammates dead, plus the driver and his wife. Twenty-nine were injured, although only eight remained in a hospital on Saturday. Seven were in serious or critical condition, and the eighth was in fair condition.

Moore said he fell asleep on the bus floor after a late night of watching movies, listening to music and chatting about the eagerly anticipated spring training.

The next thing the 21-year-old junior remembers is hitting the rail on an Atlanta interstate overpass early Friday, rolling around and "the final slam in the ground."

Moore was trapped between bus seats until his teammates pulled him out. For a long moment, they stood looking at each other in the pre-dawn darkness inside the bus that had fallen 30 feet.

The legs of Mike Ramthun and Chris Bauman were pinned beneath the bus. Moore and other teammates tried to calm them, telling them help would be on the way. They got the roof escape hatch open and stumbling out on the freeway.

"We were trying to get everybody loose off," Moore said. "Everybody was still in shock."

Timothy Kay, a pitcher, and others tried to lift the bus and pull the pinned players out.

"They were very worried about all the diesel fuel on the ground," Ed Kay said of his son. Rescue teams later freed the pair.

Moore said he looked up and saw some students wearing purple — the school color of the Mennonite-affiliated university — on the overpass. Four people, including his brother Jason, a 23-year-old assistant coach, had been thrown from the bus when it crashed into a concrete wall on the overpass.

Killed were two freshman, Scott Harmon and Cody Holp, and two sophomores, Tyler Williams and David Betts. The driver and his wife, Jerome and Jean Niemeyer, also died.

Sophomore outfielder Allen Slabaugh also was thrown onto the overpass; he was sleeping four rows from the front of the bus, sitting next to Betts. He found himself on top on the bridge with scratches and scrapes on his back and knees. He has no memory of what happened, said his mother, Kelly Slabaugh of Dalton, Ohio.

"He was sleeping in his seat and woke up on the bridge," she said.

A.J. Ramthun woke up in his window seat to see the ground come up at him as the bus was falling. It was only when his coach grabbed his arm afterward that he realized his collarbone was broken.

"We looked, and thought, 'How did we survive that?"' Ramthun said.