A converted school bus rolled off a mountainous Colorado road Tuesday night, leaving two dead and a baby girl fighting for her life, authorities said.
Two adults and three children, none wearing seat belts, were ejected from the transformed camper as it rolled 400 feet down a cliff in Larimer County, Colorado State Patrol Master Trooper Gary Cutler said.
The driver, a 47-year-old man from Greeley, and woman, 34, from Loveland were killed, officials said.
A year-old girl suffered life threatening injuries and was flown to a children’s hospital while two boys, 3 and 7, were taken away by ambulance to a hospital in Fort Collins, Cutler added.
The five were traveling in a converted Thomas Built Saf-T-Liner C2 School Bus, according to the trooper. It wasn’t immediately clear if the five people are members of the same family.
The rollover crash happened around 8:30 p.m. in the area of Pingree Park Road, the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Larimer County Emergency Services and Larimer County Search and Rescue Inc. were among the agencies responding to the incident.
While the matter remains under investigation, authorities initially believe this was an accident and not an intentional act, according to Cutler.
School buses converted into campers are not an uncommon sight in the region, the trooper said.
“They’re cheap (inexpensive) to get when school districts sell them and then they (the buyer) gets the time to go through it and put what they want in them,” Cutler said.
“Most of them are usually pretty basic. I’ve seen some more elaborate ones with toilets and everything else. And others just have some beds, storage areas and some kind of refrigerator.”
