Charges Filed in Deaths of 27 on Church Bus

RADCLIFF, Ky. — A pickup truck driver was charged with 27 counts of murder Monday after authorities said that tests showed he was stone-drunk when his vehicle careened the wrong way down an interstate highway and plowed into a crowded church bus.

At the time of the crash late Saturday, Larry Mahoney, a 34-year-old chemical worker from Worthville, Ky., had a blood alcohol level of 0.24, nearly 2.5 times the legal limit of 0.10, Commonwealth Atty. John Ackman said.

At a news conference later Monday, National Transportation Safety Board investigators said the converted school bus did not meet post-1977 safety requirements for a caged fuel tank, the Associated Press reported.

Asked if a caged tank might have prevented the fire that enveloped the bus, NTSB member Joseph T. Nall said: “That’s the ultimate question we’d like to answer, but now it would be premature.”

Nall said the fuel tank had a 3-inch gash in it and had been pushed back 26 inches in the crash.

Medical manuals indicate that the bodily functions of a person with a 0.24 level of alcohol in his blood would usually be severely impaired. At slightly higher levels of 0.3 to 0.4, most people would generally lose consciousness, the books say.

The prosecutor said Mahoney could face the death penalty if found guilty of the charges, brought in the wake of one of the worst bus accidents in U.S. history. The collision produced explosions and a fireball--when the gas tank of the bus apparently ruptured--that killed 27 persons, teen-agers and adult chaperones from Radcliff returning from an all-day outing at an amusement park near Cincinnati.

More than 30 other passengers were taken to hospitals, including eight still listed in critical condition. Mahoney also was injured in the crash. His condition was upgraded from critical to serious Monday as authorities moved to deny him bail and began questioning him in a guarded Louisville hospital room.

NTSB investigators searched in the charred and twisted hulks of the two vehicles in Carrollton, near the accident scene, for clues to the ferocity of the blast.

Groping for Answers

Here in Radcliff, 75 miles to the southwest, friends and relatives of the victims were groping for answers to an even more troubling question--how to deal with the grief, anger and anguish caused by the deaths of loved ones.

“Why? Why did it happen?” asked Anita Ardison, 14, clutching a box of tissues as she stood in the gymnasium of Radcliff Middle School. “The people on that bus, they had so much potential. . . . There was Chad, he was just an all around trip. He was always there if you were down to cheer you up. And Shawna. She would stay up all night to help you with a problem.”

In all, 16 of Anita’s Middle School classmates perished in the crash. But the hardest death of all for her to take was that of 14-year-old Amy Wheelock, Anita’s soul mate in the eighth grade.

Traded Dreams

The two were virtually inseparable. They played together, studied together and traded clothes and secrets and dreams in that special, giggly way that teen-age best friends do. They had already vowed to go to the University of Kentucky together. On the more immediate horizon, the pair had planned to show up for classes Monday wearing identical outfits and hairdos. Only Anita made it.

Saturday was one of those rare days when the friends went their separate ways. Amy got up at sunrise to go to King’s Island on the trip that had been arranged by the First Assembly of God Church. Anita, feeling lazy, slept in.

Anita said of her friend: “All last night I dreamt about her. . . . She never got to drive or go to college or anything.”

Most Church Members

Most of those killed were members of the Assembly of God Church, but the grief rippled throughout this entire community of 20,000 on the edge of Ft. Knox. The local newspaper put out a four-page “extra” edition to detail the tragedy. Flags were lowered to half staff. And merchants along Dixie Highway removed the pitches and slogans from their gaudy marquees and replaced them with messages of sympathy.

Military counselors and psychological services at Ft. Knox were made available to all in town who felt the need for special help to cope with the disaster. More than half of those killed were military dependents.

But nowhere was the impact of the crash more evident on Monday than in the schools, where many students who had never before had to come to grips with a death suddenly found themselves confronted by several.

At the 775-student Middle School, the band lost 10 members. Pat McKinney, who teaches gifted students, lost five of her star pupils. To make it easier to stare at the empty chairs, she told her remaining students Monday to ignore their assigned seats and sit where they chose.

Principal Charles Jones told his teachers to forget about assigned lessons and, instead, to spend the day discussing the crash and remembering their late friends.

“We all know that tragedy works in mysterious ways and the Lord works in mysterious ways,” he told students over the public address system after the opening bell. “ . . . Our friends and fellow students have gone to a better place.”

Officials at North Hardin High School, which lost three of its 1,800 students, reported nearly three times the usual number of absentees Monday. Some students left the building in mid-morning, tears streaming from their eyes. Inside, said senior Lori Coffey, the atmosphere was grim.

“That’s the hardest part,” she said. “You walk down the hall and see the hurt ‘cause nobody’s saying anything. You don’t know what to say and there’s nothing to do. It just doesn’t seem real. Things like this don’t happen in Radcliff.”