Two members of a university cycling team were killed and seven others were injured Wednesday when a car collided with a group of riders in northeastern Tennessee, state officials said.
Milligan University, a private Christian school with just over 1,200 students, said 11 of its cyclists were out together on a morning training ride when they were struck by a driver in Hampton, about 11 miles (18 kilometers) from the campus in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
The county’s district attorney, Steve Finney, said a 69-year-old man from North Carolina had been arrested and faced two counts of reckless vehicular homicide and five counts of aggravated assault by vehicle with recklessness.
Milligan sophomores Haylan Engdahl, of Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, and Brayden Rogers, of Huntsville, Alabama, were killed in the crash, university President Stephen Waers said. The other student-athletes were transported to the nearby Johnson City Medical Center, he said.
“We need to help our brothers and sisters bear burdens that are too great for any one person to carry alone,” Waers said in an emotional video message shared with the school community. He urged students to come together in prayer for their injured peers.
As of Wednesday evening, four students were in critical condition, two others were stable but remained in the hospital, and one student had been discharged, said the hospital’s trauma medical director, Dr. Bracken Burns.
Earlier this year, the Milligan University men’s cycling team won a team time trial national championship at the USA Cycling Collegiate Road Nationals in Wisconsin.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol was still investigating the circumstances of the crash, said Maj. Roy Brown. The speed limit on the section of Highway 19 where the the crash occurred is 50 miles per hour (about 80 kilometers per hour), officials said.