5 hospitalized after school bus and armored van collided on I-240 | News

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A school bus, an armored van and several other cars smashed into each other on I-240 Wednesday afternoon.

The crash sent five people to the hospital and brought traffic to a standstill.

According to MPD, none of those five people had life-threatening injuries.

One man who was involved in the crash told FOX13 the pileup formed in just seconds.

“I’ve been in wrecks, but nothing near like this,” Sam Jobe said.

Sam Jobe said his wife was one of the people taken to the hospital.

He said a red car stalled in the middle of the road, then the armored car swerved to avoid it and hit the school bus.

A Jeep then hit the stalled car, then hit Jobe, crushing the roof and windshield of his car.

“The Jeep in front of me, he hit the car that had stalled in the middle of the road,” Jobe said. “The Jeep went up on its side and I went up under the Jeep and pushed him over into another car.”

He spent the afternoon waiting for his family to come pick him up from the scene and said he was lucky to be able to walk away.

“It just happened too fast, there wasn’t anything to do about it,” Jobe said. “Fortunately, I had my seatbelt on and it didn’t really crush the roof that much. I hit him sideways at a glance, so it could have been a lot worse.”

The cleanup lasted through the afternoon.

A second school bus arrived and unloaded three people from the crashed one, including a child in a wheelchair.

According to MPD, none of the school bus passengers were taken to the hospital.

Another armored car arrived and unloaded stacks of cash from the crashed one, before a fleet of tow trucks with a police escort arrived to clear out the damaged cars.

“We got multiple tow trucks out here trying to clear this out,” Demarcus McPherson, one of the tow truck drivers, said. “Being out here on the road, we try to move quickly on the highway because a lot of people aren’t paying attention to the road.”

The pileup left traffic backed up as far as the eye could see and left drivers with a new understanding of the dangers of highway driving.

“It could have been a lot worse, to be honest with you,” Jobe said. “On the interstate, a car stops and you don’t expect it, then all of a sudden BOOM, there it is.”