Tragedy struck an Arkansas highway Monday when a youth football team from Memphis was involved in a bus crash as it traveled back home from a tournament in Texas.
As reported by our partners with the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the bus in question was involved in a crash on Interstate 30 near Benton, Ark. One child was reported as dying in the accident, while some 45 other people were reportedly injured in the crash. It is unknown how many of those injured are children and how many are adult chaperones.
The team from the Orange Mound Youth Association — a football program in a historically black neighborhood of Memphis that has rallied around the youth football teams — was en route from Dallas, where it competed on Sunday. The youth football players were all elementary school aged, according to the Associated Press.
“On behalf of all Memphians, our hearts and prayers go out to the Orange Mound children and their families involved in this morning’s tragic bus accident in Arkansas,” Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland told the media in a statement.
Little Rock-based Arkansas Children’s Hospital, which is approximately 25 miles from the site of the crash, received 25 injured children, all of whom are currently listed as stable. Officials at Arkansas Children’s also moved quickly to establish a family reunification area, while state troopers have questioned the driver of the bus, which appears to have crashed near a highway exit with a sharp curve.