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CAS3
03-12-04, 11:36 AM
Three Dead in Military Bus Crash in S.C.



GARDENS CORNER, S.C. - A bus carrying Navy personnel to a wreath-laying ceremony collided with a tractor-trailer Friday and another bus veered off the highway, authorities said. Three sailors were killed and dozens more injured.
About 100 people were aboard the two buses when the accident happened around 8 a.m., said Sid Gaulden, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety.

Three sailors were killed, and the driver of the tractor-trailer was seriously injured, Gaulden said. Sixty sailors were taken to a hospital at Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, Gaulden said. About 40 others injured were taken to local hospitals.

It was not immediately clear whether other vehicles were involved in the accident. The two buses were part of a convoy of four or five, Charleston Naval Weapons Station spokeswoman Susan Piedfort said.

The convoy was traveling from the guided missile destroyer William Pinckney in Charleston to Beaufort National Cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the destroyer's namesake, Piedfort said. The ceremony was part of events leading up to the upcoming formal commission of the destroyer.

Another ceremony, scheduled to take place on the ship itself, was canceled, Piedfort said.

The site of the crash is about 50 miles west of Charleston.

Pinckney, who is credited with saving the life of a shipmate during a Japanese attack on the carrier Enterprise in 1942, died in 1975.