Bluffton bus crash survivor in another wreck

This week, he survived another crash when the van he was traveling in blew a tire and rolled over. Slabaugh says he's counting his blessings.

"It all happened so quickly," Slabaugh told the AJC on Friday. "I was thinking, ‘Here we go again.' I'm just so thankful this time no one was killed or seriously injured."

Slabaugh, from Ohio, said his memories of the college baseball team's crash early March 2, 2007, are still vivid. He lost five teammates in the crash, which also killed the bus driver and his wife. David Betts, seated right next to Slabaugh, died. Slabaugh needed only stitches.

"I still think about it every day," Slaubaugh said.

Slabaugh graduated in 2009 with degrees in sports management and business administration and worked briefly for a minor league baseball organization. But he realized quickly he wanted to do more. He joined the Mennonite Voluntary Service group and is currently working for The Fuller House Center for Housing, a Georgia-based Christian housing ministry.

Slabaugh says he earns a small stipend and typically lives with four or five other people as part of the organization's work in 60 communities across the U.S. He is the leader of a group planning a 3,600-mile bike ride across the country to raise money and awareness for the organization.

Eight people, including Slabaugh, were in a van headed to Seattle from Idaho on Tuesday when a tire apparently blew, causing the van to sway before rolling over. No one was seriously injured, but the group's van and trailer were destroyed.

Slabaugh said Friday he was hoping to find another van so the group could continue its mission. Still, Slabaugh said he enjoys his work and the chance to help people, and sees it as his calling.

Life, Slabaugh said, changed drastically for him after living through his baseball team's bus crash.

"I think about life in a different way," Slabaugh said. "You can't go through an experience like that and not come away changed."

For more information or to donate to the Fuller Center, visit the organization's website .

Another wreck for survivor of Ohio team '07 crash - seattlepi.com

This June 7, 2011 handout photo provided by The Fuller Center for Housing shows the crash scene of a van which was carrying Allen Slabaugh and his cycling teammates in Burley, Idaho while on their way to Seattle for the start a 3,600-mile bike ride to Washington, D.C., to raise money for the Georgia-based Fuller Center for Housing. Slabaugh is a survivor of a 2007 bus crash in Atlanta that killed five of his teammates on the Bluffton University baseball team. Photo: The Fuller Center For Housing, Scott Umstattd / AP In this June 7, 2011 handout photo provided by The Fuller Center for Housing shows Allen Slabaugh, top row left, is joined by his cycling teammates after their van overturned in Burley, Idaho on the way to Seattle for the start a 3,600-mile bike ride to Washington, D.C., to raise money for the Georgia-based Fuller Center for Housing. Slabaugh is a survivor of the 2007 bus crash in Atlanta that killed five of his teammates on the Bluffton University baseball team. Photo: The Fuller Center For Housing, Scott Umstattd / AP This is a March 2, 2007 file photo, showing a charter bus that was carrying the Bluffton University baseball team from Ohio that plunged off a highway ramp in Atlanta, killing five members of the team. Allen Slabaugh, who survived the 2007 bus crash, has lived through another crash. He was among eight people in a van that blew out a tire and flipped over this week in Idaho. He and his cycling team were headed to Seattle to start a 3,600-mile bike ride to Washington, D.C., to raise money for the Georgia-based Fuller Center for Housing. Photo: Gene Blythe / AP

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A man who survived a 2007 bus crash that killed five of his Ohio college baseball teammates and two other people says he had flashbacks this week when he went through another serious accident with a different team, fellow cyclists he'll lead on a cross-country ride for charity.

"The van tilted a little bit, and went and rolled," Allen Slabaugh said Friday, as he recounted Tuesday's wreck on Interstate 84 near Burley, in southern Idaho. "For me personally, it had a very similar feel to the bus accident in 2007."

Slabaugh, 24, was on a bus carrying members of the Bluffton University baseball team to Florida when it plunged off an Atlanta highway overpass. The bus driver and his wife were killed, along with the five teammates.

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