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Nov 20, 2009 10:56 pm US/Central
Married Couple Recalls Deadly Tour Bus Crash
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ―
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His wife, Beverly, and he had just left the Iowa casino, located right over the Minnesota border, and were on their way home when suddenly their trip took a turn for the worse.
CBS
A Minnesota couple married for 58 years has never experienced anything as awful as their recent bus ride in Austin, Minnesota.
"It's an experience I don't ever want to be in again," said Dale Cooper, who is now resting at his home in Rochester.
His wife, Beverly, and he had just left the Iowa casino, located right over the Minnesota border, and were on their way home when suddenly their trip took a turn for the worse.
"As soon as we hit the rumble strips and we kept going across the highway, I knew something was wrong," Dale remembered.
He and his wife had just settled in for a nap.
The bus suddenly careened off I-90's Eastbound lane, across the middle median and right into oncoming traffic in the Westbound lane. It then went into the ditch and flipped on its side.
"She was underneath my legs. My legs were on top of hers," he recalled.
"I was laying on the floor and I just saw all these people coming," Beverly recalled.
She remembers the firefighters, paramedics and people driving by who stopped to help.
One by one, rescue workers got into the bus through broken windows and tended to those who were hurt the worst.
"There was one person on the inside that lifts you and then somebody else who was on the outside," Dale said, explaining how they got out through the bus' emergency escape hatch in the ceiling.
Paramedics checked their blood pressure and vital signs before bringing them to different hospitals where Beverly spent the night and Dale got out in a few hours.
Both are severely bruised. There have black and blue marks on both their bodies from head to toe.
"I got more spots today that are banged up than I thought I had," Dale remarked.
However, both said they are extremely lucky considering all they went through.
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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