Wyoming: Five students killed in car crash while visiting college

Five students returning from a trip to attend college were killed in an accident caused by a wrong-way driver.

Two current and three former students at Sylvan Hills High School died in Sunday night’s car crash on Interstate 80 east of Rawlins, Wyoming, according to Pulaski County Special Education District Administrators.

Salomon Correa, Magdalene Franco, Andrea Prime, Suzy Prime and Ava Luplow have been identified as victims of the crash.

They attended Jackson Hole Bible College in Wyoming and were driving back to Arkansas at the time of the crash.

Wyoming Highway Patrol officers were alerted to a wrong-way driver on Interstate 80 around 6:52 p.m. and five minutes later that the driver had collided with other vehicles.

The Dodge Ram 3500, driving the wrong direction, hit a commercial vehicle, a passenger car and another commercial vehicle. The second truck reportedly tried to avoid a collision by moving into the median, and after exiting the median, it collided head-on with a Ford F-150. The five occupants of the Ford F-150 were fatally injured and other drivers in the crash were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Authorities arrested the Dodge driver on suspicion of disability. He could face more charges.

More than 100 people attended a candlelight vigil on Monday.

“I didn’t believe it until I was all over social media and that’s all I saw,” said high school graduate student Quint Scruggs. “I told everyone, there’s no way I can’t believe it.”

Scruggs said three girls he went to high school with who died were “always happy, I mean there was never a dull moment, they always made you laugh.”

A school district official said classes will resume Tuesday with counselors.

“No words can express the depth of it,” Sherwood Mayor Mary Jo Heyetownsell told KATV. “Certainly we must always be vigilant in relation to her colleagues, her friends who will be so affected by this.”

The accident is being investigated by the highway police.

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