In 42 years as a Franklin County Sheriff’s Department chaplain, Father Leo Connolly has comforted people after many tragedies, including the events of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York City.
“In all the time, I don’t think I’ve seen anything as traumatic” as the aftermath of a fatal accident along Interstate 70 in Licking County on Tuesday, Nov. 14 that killed six people and injured 18, he said.
Three of the deceased were students on a charter bus taking members of the Zoarville Tuscarawas Valley High School band to a performance at an Ohio School Boards Association conference in Columbus. The other three were a teacher and two parents in a car traveling with the students.
The Ohio Highway Patrol said the chain-reaction accident, near the freeway’s Exit 118 for State Route 310 in Etna, also involved a tractor-trailer, a commercial vehicle and another passenger vehicle. At least three of the vehicles caught fire.
Father Connolly is pastor of Pickerington St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish, located off the next I-70 exit west of the crash site, and was called to assist at a unification and notification center set up at Etna United Methodist Church for parents and family members of people on the bus and the other vehicles.
Also at the center was another sheriff’s department chaplain, Father Joseph Yokum, pastor of Grove City Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church.
The bus carried 54 students, teachers and chaperones. The high school is about two hours northeast of Columbus and is on the northern edge of the Diocese of Columbus, near the border of Stark and Tuscarawas counties.
“The patrol and the law enforcement agencies in the area near the crash made a tremendous effort in setting up the center so quickly and getting it staffed with school personnel, clergy from several denominations, victim assistance coordinators and mental health professionals,” Father Connolly said.
“It was extremely emotional because you had so many parents making the two-hour trip and not knowing whether their children were dead or alive. Different areas were set apart where some parents were reunited with their children, others were told their children were injured and some sadly were told their children had died. No matter the situation, there were many moments of raw emotion.
“I’ve counseled many people in cases of sudden death, but this situation was one of the most difficult I’ve witnessed in terms of the severity of the accident and the number of people involved.
“I was in New York after 9/11, but in that case, people had some time to start processing their grief before I got there. Here, the pain was fresh, and I saw people’s immediate reactions.
“I talked to about 10 or 15 people in two or three hours – not many students, mostly school personnel and first responders. No matter who you talked to, the intensity of the situation was obvious.
“I haven’t dealt with the deaths of too many young people as a sheriff’s chaplain, but these are always some of the most difficult to handle because young people have so much they might have given to the world had they lived.”