Horror crash splits hockey team bus in half

Experts are investigating today why a bus chartered for a Canadian hockey team swerved and rammed a parked tractor-trailer so hard that the bus split in half lengthwise, killing four people and injuring 19.

Visibility at the time of the crash on Saturday afternoon in western New York was good and the highway was dry and clear, state police Maj Steven White said.

White said the bus driver, Ryan Comfort of Ontario, told police that he hit something in the road before the crash.

White said Comfort, being treated at a hospital in Rochester, New York, was being watched by a state trooper to ensure that he did not leave the United States.

No charges had been filed. “However, that doesn’t mean (the driver) is not a person of interest,” Livingston County district attorney Thomas Moran told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

The National Transportation Safety Board sent a three-member team to investigate, NTSB spokesman Paul Schlamm said.

The Coach Canada bus was chartered by the Windsor Wildcats, a club hockey team of women aged 18 to 21. After a morning game in Rochester, it was taking some of the players, as well as family members and coaches, to a ski centre when it struck the truck on Interstate 390, 27 miles south of Rochester.

The driver of the tractor-trailer, owned by Xtra Lease of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, had parked it on the hard shoulder and was outside the cab when the bus rear-ended the rig, police said.

The truck driver, Ernest Zeiset, 42, of Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania, and three bus passengers were killed. The bus passengers were the team’s coach Richard Edwards, 46, and his 13-year-old son Brian, from LaSalle, Ontario, and Catherine Roach, 50, of Windsor, Ontario, the mother of a player.

Friends described Edwards as a well-known figure in the community who loved coaching hockey and baseball. His wife, Sheila, was the team trainer and manager. His 21-year-old daughter, Kelly, was the goalkeeper on the team. Both survived the crash.

“They were a true sports family,” said Kevin Beaudoin, president of the LaSalle Minor Hockey Association, where Edwards also coached. “Whatever they did, they did as a family so it’s not ironic that they were on that bus.”

Three passengers were in “guarded” condition yesterday at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, hospital spokeswoman Leslie Orr said. She said Comfort was in a satisfactory condition with a knee injury.