FOUR DIE IN TURNPIKE BUS CRASH.

Harrisburg, Pa. (UPI) -- The Rev. LEROY CARTER stood with a touch of shock and apprehension in his eyes and stared fixedly at the mangled wreckage of the red and white bus.
He had a white gauze bandage above his right eye and his mouth was bleeding. His blue suit was muddy and soaked from the driving rain.
"Don't talk to him now," a nurse standing at his side said. "This isn't the right time. His daughter is still in there."
Forty feet down a muddy embankment a rescue worker used an acetylene torch to cut through the squashed, twisted from of the Continental Trailways charter bus, which crashed Sunday, killing four persons and injuring 45 others -- all members of the Present Day Baptist Church of Cleveland. They were returning home from a weekend sightseeing trip to Philadelphia.
A 120-foot length of heavy gauge steel guardrail was wrapped around the bus. Had it not prevented the bus from falling further down the hillside, police said, more persons might have been killed.
A rescue worker shouted when the managed to free the last of the trapped occupants, a woman. She was dead.
The REV. CARTER, grim buy dry-eyes and silent, watched as the body of his 28-year-old daughter, MRS. KATHLEEN ASKEW, was covered with a yellow plastic shroud and placed in an ambulance.
It was about 12:30 p.m. EST Sunday when the bus rounded a curve in the Pennsylvania Turnpike six miles east of here and the driver, JOSEPH W. PEGANO, 26, of Pittsburgh, saw two automobiles stopped in the roadway. A Greyhound bus traveling in the opposite direction flashed its lights, meaning "danger."
PEGANO braked and the bus skidded on the wet pavement, struck a medial guardrail, then crashed through a guardrail and fell down a deep embankment. It turned over as it fell, landing on its roof.
The dead, in addition to MRS. ASKEW, were SIMONE SCOTT, 4; MICHAEL HOWARD, 11, and ANNA MAY WORLEY, about 35.
Eight of those hospitalized were reported in critical condition, two were in "unsatisfactory" condition and the others in satisfactory condition.
CARTER, who organized the trip, visited with every one of the injured.
"He felt he was responsible for the accident," a nurse at General Hospital said. "He's taking the whole brunt of it on his own shoulders and you can't talk him out of it."
IVAN MARTIN, JR., of Lebanon, Pa., was the driver of one of the cars on the bridge. He had stopped to help another driver who had skidded and struck the media guard rail.
"We got the car going but when I turned around I saw the bus rolling over and people flying out the windows," MARTIN said. "There were maybe a dozen people all over the road when the bus came to a stop."
OLLIE HARRIS, JR., of Cleveland, was sitting in the very back of the bus when the accident occurred.
"I rolled over as the bus was tumbling," he said. "I was almost in a ball. When it landed there were people on top of me screaming and I was pinned under the seat."
HARRIS said he managed to wiggle free and, like most of the other passengers who escaped, crawled out a window.
REV. CARTER, meanwhile, ignored the cuts above his eye and helped pull the injured out of the bus. He said rescue workers, however, told him to leave one passenger alone. It was his daughter.
An ambulance driver said CARTER would not allow himself to be taken to the hospital until everyone else was out of the bus.
He was later treated and released from Harrisburg General Hospital and went to visit injured passengers who had been taken to two other hospitals.

The Leader-Times Kittanning Pennsylvania 1972-04-17
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!