Sixteen hockey players from Chicago's St. Ignatius College Prep School were injured when a semi slammed into their school bus while traveling in Indiana.
According to the local ABC affiliate, the crash was in Warsaw, Ind., and the bust was carrying 23 student-athletes from the St. Ignatius junior varsity boys hockey team and two coaches. Three of the players were critically injured.
The team was heading to a hotel after dinner following a tournament earlier in the day.
"Right now prayer is the most important thing," St. Ignatius College Prep president John Chandler said. "We had 16 students that were injured, five were admitted to the hospital. At this point in time, all of them will be returning to health, but some much longer than others."
Police believe alcohol was a factor, as Warsaw police detected a strong odor of alcohol from the 58-year-old truck driver who failed a field sobriety test. He is now facing possible felony charges.
"We're grateful for the respect of privacy for those families and also truly ask for prayers," Chandler said. "Many people in our community have reached out saying, 'What can we do?' And that's the great gift of St. Ignatius community."
Elizabeth Kaveny, mother of two St. Ignatius student and attorney who has handled numerous trucking negligence cases, is hoping she can help the families with children who were involved in the crash.
"They are going to have to go through a whole criminal proceeding in another state and some of them are going to look to a civil proceeding in this state or in Indiana. So a lot of them are going to struggle with, what do you want to do next," Kaveny said. "I have talked to a couple families already that just wanted to cry with me and they just said they didn't know what they needed, they didn't even have any questions yet, but they just wanted to cry and tell me what it happened. I just said, 'I know, I know. It's going to be OK, it's going to be OK, you're going to be OK.'"
