A school bus carrying students and staff from Kenwood Middle School in Clarksville collided with a state dump truck and a passenger vehicle on Highway 70 on Friday afternoon, killing two students and injuring several others.
The crash happened around noon. Tennessee Highway Patrol Major Travis Plotzer confirmed at a press briefing that the bus was transporting 25 students and five adult staff members at the time of the collision. Two adults were in the Tennessee Department of Transportation dump truck, and one person was in the passenger vehicle, a Chevrolet Trailblazer.
The two students who died were not publicly identified. Their ages have not been released.
What brought Kenwood students to Highway 70
The Clarksville-Montgomery County School System confirmed that the Kenwood group was traveling to a GreenPower USA event in Jackson, Tennessee, a student-focused science and engineering competition, when the crash occurred. The school is located northeast of Carroll County, where the collision took place.
Photos and eyewitness accounts from the scene showed the yellow school bus partially off the roadway, with a section of the vehicle elevated from the ground.
The response on the ground
Nine air ambulance helicopters were deployed to transport the injured. Andrew Hoard, director of Baptist Ambulance in west Tennessee, confirmed the scale of the aerial response. Four pediatric patients were taken to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, where a hospital spokesperson confirmed all four were in stable condition. An additional 19 people were treated at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Carroll County and later discharged.
The Carroll County and Montgomery County Sheriff’s Offices, along with multiple law enforcement and emergency medical teams, responded to the scene alongside the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Investigation ongoing
Major Plotzer said initial assessments suggest the dump truck was not a contributing factor to the crash, though investigators are still working to reconstruct the sequence of events. The Tennessee Highway Patrol said it would release additional details once all facts had been gathered.
Kenwood Middle School reacts
Principal Karen Miller from Kenwood addressed families in a written statement, describing the crash as an unimaginable tragedy and urging parents to support their children through the emotional weight of what had happened. Counseling services are scheduled to be available to students of Kenwood Middle School and staff beginning Monday.
The Clarksville-Montgomery County School System released a statement saying the community would need continued support in the days ahead and pledged to share information about ways to assist affected families as more details were confirmed.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee offered his condolences and asked the state to keep the victims and their families in their thoughts. Montgomery County Mayor Wes Golden also spoke publicly about the grief spreading through the county.
The two students killed have not yet been identified pending family notification.
