Chris Yankopoulos woke up on the floor of his team’s cross country bus Saturday morning having no idea what had put him there. The team was en route to its first meet of the season when a car traveling at 60 m.p.h. hit them head on without ever hitting the brakes.
Westbrook’s “American Journal” reported on Thursday that the team’s bus had been struck by the vehicle, whose driver was wanted on seven theft warrants and was being pursued by a police officer at about 6 a.m. Westbrook Police told the “Journal” that the driver of the car, Michael Churchill, 20, ran a red light at the intersection between Saco Street and Route 22 at an approximate speed of 60 m.p.h, before slamming into a bus carrying the 20-member team. The car with Churchill and his passenger Robert Swan, 18, of Westbrook, was dragged sideways by the bus after impact for what USM runner Chris Hopkins estimated to be about 100 feet. It finally came to a stop underneath the bus, trapping the two men inside. Churchill, died the next day at Maine Medical Center. Five members of the team sustained minor injuries including concussions, a knee injury and a back injury.
“Lots of us were trying to sleep, and all of a sudden we just got hit,” said Chris Yankopoulos, a senior and member of the team. “That’s the thing that I remember the most was how hard we got hit. I fell to the floor, and a few other guys fell out of their seats or in-between them. We all just sat stunned on the bus for a second. Then we saw smoke and ran off of the bus.”
The bus driver, Lawrence Churchill, 52, is being credited by Yankopoulos with taking control of the situation and bringing the bus to a stop after it was struck off course on the road and crossed both lanes. From inside the bus the team wasn’t sure what had hit them because the car was out of sight, wedged underneath the bus itself.
“There was an ungodly scene,” said Yankopoulos. “[The car] was a tin can accordion. The most disturbing thing was thinking, ‘the driver can’t be alive’. I was just in shock.”
The team was asked to stay at the scene as witnesses. Hopkins was one of five teammates and two coaches who were brought to a local hospital for examination and treatment. At the time of impact he was seated on the left side of the bus, the same side that was struck by the speeding car. The captain remembers hitting his head hard against the panel of the bus. Getting off of the bus, he vomited as a result and paramedics took him to the hospital. Hopkins, his teammates and the injured coaches were released by 1 p.m. that day, shaken but safe. Coach Scott Hutchinson was sitting in the front of the bus and suffered a minor injury when he hit his knee. He says that he quickly moved his players, telling them that there had been an accident and to get off the bus. He worried that his runners were critically injured and made sure that each of them was okay.
“We have a great group of young men,” said Hutchinson. “We are just taking it one day at a time.”
The team never made it to Connecticut. Despite the fact that a few runners weren’t able to compete in their second meet last weekend, Hopkins is confident that the accident won’t have a lasting negative impact on the team.
“We’ll be fine no matter what,” said Hopkins. “It’s very emotional whenever anyone passes away in a car accident that you were involved in. It kind of threw us off course, but in the end it brought us together in terms of dealing with it. We’re gonna move on and just try and move past it.”
i miss you….mom