The Bus

Out of the Lincoln Tunnel and onto the New Jersey Turnpike late one night last week rumbled two chartered buses. Aboard were 84 students from Trenton State College (for teachers) and two faculty members, returning to Trenton from Manhattan after seeing Archibald MacLeish's prizewinning play J.B. It was past midnight as the darkened buses cut off the turnpike at New Brunswick and headed south for Trenton. In the second bus, some of the 40 coeds aboard dozed; others chattered about the play, and a few were singing songs.

Highballing along behind the second bus was a trailer-tanker truck, and at the wheel was 54-year-old Roscoe Poe, who had made a delivery of linseed oil to New York and was hauling his tanker back to Philadelphia. Roscoe Poe's driving history was pock-marked with traffic violations and convictions: in the past five years, he had committed at least seven moving violations (speeding, passing red lights, etc.) in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. But there he was, still driving--and driving a truck with bad brakes.

The bus in front of Poe approached an intersection, slowed down to stop for a red light. Roscoe Poe kept going, and the truck crashed into the rear of the bus.

Poe's big fender tanks split; motor fuel washed against the bus's hot rear engine, and flames exploded into the sky. Screaming wildly, the girls struggled to get out, pushed toward the front of the bus. Professor Ernest Sixta, who had been sitting in the back, yelled, "Don't panic! Don't panic!" Bus Driver Carmen Nini opened his door, pushed out a few girls. Fighting his way through the billowing flames to the rear, he forced open the emergency doors and began shoving out others. "The heat was awful," said one girl. "I jumped to the street. My skirt was on fire. They rolled me on the grass."

Truckdriver Poe, his left leg caught in the cab, cried to rescuers: "Don't let me die this way! Thank God you're here! Oh my God! Thank God you're here! Help me! Save me!" With crowbars and wrenches, emergency crews got Poe free, sent him on to a hospital with four badly burned coeds. The charred bodies of Professor Sixta and nine girls were sent to the morgue.

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