Car Crash Kills Seven High School Basketball Players From New Brunswick

by Rob Walker | January 14, 2008 at 11:10 am | 315 views | add comment

Deadly car accidents are always a tragedy, but it always seems especially sad when a team or group of people die like this.

Students are returning to class Monday morning in the wake of a horrific crash that claimed the lives of seven members of a Bathurst, N.B. high school basketball team.

Grief counsellors will be on hand at Bathurst high school to help students deal with the loss. Along with the seven members of the team, the coach's wife Elizabeth Lord, a 51-year-old music teacher, was also killed.

"We're not really sure how today is going to unfold," Don McKay, the school's vice-principal, told Canada AM on Monday. "We will try to be as normal as we can."

Mayor Stephen Brunet predicted it would "be a tough day all around."

The crash occurred early Saturday when the van the team was travelling in smashed into a tractor trailer on an icy highway just south of Bathurst, N.B.

[q
url="http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/story.html?id=95c36968-d94a-48b6-920e-0095c4dfa1bf&k=47031"]Anne
Arseneault stood on the edge of the highway in the crisp, winter
sunshine outside this heartbroken city Sunday, and wept.

"Those poor little boys," she cried. "God wanted them. They're all angels now."

In the ditch beside the asphalt, a scar of dirt and bloodstained
snow are all that remain of the terrible Friday night accident that
injured Arseneault's grandson Brad, and killed seven teammates from the
Bathurst High School Phantoms senior basketball squad.

Brad Arseneault and another player survived the tragedy with broken
bones. So did Katie Lord, a Grade 12 student at the school who had
accompanied the team on its road trip last week to play a game in
Moncton, two hours away.[/q]

Classes will resume at a Bathurst, N.B., high school Monday with grief
counsellors on hand to help students deal with the deaths of seven
teenagers and a local teacher.

The small community has been in shock since the crash early Saturday
as the students, all members of the Bathurst school's boy's basketball
team, were returning from a game in Moncton.

Seven members of the team and the wife of the team's coach were
killed when their 12-seat van fish-tailed and slammed head-on into a
transport truck on an icy road.