MOUNT PLEASANT, Texas-Tears, hugs and prayers filled a gymnasium at Mount Pleasant High School Friday during a prayer vigil for the victims of a school bus crash Thursday that killed two people and injured 22.
Thirty-year-old Angelica Beard, a PE teacher at Frances Corprew Elementary and volunteer assistant track coach at the high school, was killed in the crash, along with 50-year-old Bradley Ray Farmer of Bogard, Mo., the driver of the truck that hit Beard's car.
Superintendent Judd Marshall said he was shocked when he got the phone call in the middle of the night and drove out to the crash site.
"It put things in perspective for me about really how finite life is," he told those in the packed gym. "In the school system, we try to teach kids the important things in life and how to grow up and be a productive member of society at some point in time, but you don't teach these things. There's no way to plan for something like this to happen."
The bus was returning from the Deon Minor Wildcat Relay track meet at Paris High School. Boys' track coach Van Bowen was driving the bus with the boys' team south on U.S. Highway 271 when the 18-wheeler crossed the line into the path of the bus. Bowen drove the bus into the ditch to avoid crashing into the truck, which then hit Beard's car head on, killing her instantly. Marshall said Bowen is at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler with 12 broken ribs, a torn diaphragm, a ruptured spleen and other internal injuries.
"He did make some improvement today, enough improvement that they feel like they're going to go back tomorrow afternoon and hopefully start some more of the surgery, which is a good thing," Marshall said. "Our hope is that he's going to be okay. We've got concussions, broken noses, couple of other broken bones, cuts and bruises on all kinds of kids, but nothing else we really believe is severe other than Coach Bowen."
Coach Ryan Stanage, who was also riding on the bus, is at Parkland Hospital in Dallas with a broken jaw and collarbone, and another student also remains at Parkland with unnamed injuries.
The superintendent told the crowd of the national attention the crash has drawn, and how much it meant to the district and the victims' families to come together as a show of strength in the middle of tragedy.
"I did 12 TV interviews today," he said. "It drew that much attention, and that's a good thing because out of the tragedy we've had, we're also going to show how the community can come together in just a few seconds and show how much we care about and love each other."
Marshall said counselors had been at the high school campus and also at the Corprew campus to give support to the students.
"High school kids keep it inside a little more, but our principals over there had to tell our kids today that she wasn't going to be back," he said. "Everybody loved her. It was very, very hard for those kids. That's the thing that's probably upset me the most is those kids, how they're affected. We're all in this kid business together and I just can't stand it. It's eating me up. Those are little bitty kids and trying to explain to them why your teacher's not going to come back is quite difficult."
Beard is survived by her husband, Terry, and two children. A Go Fund Me account set up in her name had reached $24,455 late Friday. The account can be found at gofundme.com/beard-family-fund.