College baseball player dies week after bus crash in Georgia

A college baseball player pulled from the wreckage of his team's charter bus in Georgia died of his injuries, raising the death toll from last week's crash to seven.

Photo: College baseball player dies week after bus crash in Georgia

Zach Arend, 18, had been in critical condition since the bus went off a highway overpass before dawn last Friday.

He died about 6 a.m. Friday, said Grady Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Denise Simpson. Arend's grandmother, Ann Miller, had said the Ohio teenager had suffered chest and abdominal injuries, a fractured pelvis and collapsed lungs.

Arend's parents, Dana and Caroline, wrote in a family statement that he was a wonderful son. "He loved baseball, and he loved being with his family and friends."

Four of Arend's Bluffton University teammates, the bus driver and the driver's wife were killed when the bus plowed off an overpass in Atlanta and crashed onto the Interstate 75 pavement below. More than two dozen others aboard were injured, the AP reports.

The Ohio team's coach, James Grandey, was listed in stable condition in the intensive care unit at Piedmont Hospital Friday. Two players remained hospitalized at Grady Memorial, one in critical condition and one in fair condition, Simpson said. Another player was in stable condition at Atlanta Medical Center.

Investigators have said the driver apparently mistook an exit ramp for a highway lane, continued along it without stopping at a "T" intersection at the top of the ramp and then went over the edge.

Team member Kyle King, talking to reporters from his hospital room earlier this week, said most of the players were asleep when he heard the bus driver's wife scream, the tires screech and the bus hit the concrete barrier.