Jackson State Baseball Team's Bus Catches Fire on Way to Game vs. Savannah State

On Monday afternoon, the Jackson State baseball team headed toward Savannah, Georgia for a midweek game against Savannah State slated for Tuesday night at 6 p.m. ET.    

The trip then took a disastrous turn as the team's bus caught on fire while driving down Interstate-20. Megan West of 16 WAPT News captured an image of the burning bus and provided details of the accident:

Josh Moon of the Montgomery Advertiser later reported that overheating led to the fire:

Melissa Y. Kim of CBS 42 also gave us a glimpse of all that remained of the charred bus following the incident:

Luckily, as West reports, every person aboard the bus made it out of the vehicle safely. Jackson State would later confirm the report and announced that no players were injured, per the school's Twitter account:

The game set for Tuesday night has now been cancelled due to the situation, per the school's official announcement:

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The bus was transporting the JSU baseball team to a game at Savannah State University scheduled for May 6. The team will return to Jackson May 5. The game has been cancelled.

JSU officials are in the process of notifying the parents of all of the student athletes who were on the bus.

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The Tigers are currently 27-23 on the season and 9-15 in the SWAC conference. After dropping two straight series in the conference to Alabama State and Alcorn State, the team had hopes of rebounding to close out the season against Savannah State and Norfolk State before the SWAC tournament kicks off next week.

With the Savannah State matchup now canceled, there is no word on whether the team will still travel to Norfolk, Virginia for the final two games of the week on Thursday and Friday.

 

Follow R. Cory Smith on Twitter.